Pony Xpress

I have just returned from my 3rd Pony Xpress re-ride in Central Wyoming. We had 58 miles across South Pass to ride the mail... A young woman and two younger girls took 6 of those miles, while the 7 of us took the rest.. The mail came into Atlantic City at 8:40pm, and we handed it off in Jeffrey City at 3am. Averaging 10 miles an hour... The past 2 years we carried the mail from 2am until dawn... So this was a nice change to get the mail early enough to ride with a little light, in the beginning at least. The mail came into Wyoming an hour early and left an hour and 45 min. early...

The way the re-ride works is that riders leap frog with each other in there rigs.. The average rider does 2-5 miles at a time. We tend to take 2-3 miles each, due to our horses conditions... We don't do a whole lot of preparation... I rode with my friend Phyllis, her son Jesse, her niece Jenn and sister in law Janet, Jesse's good friend Tom, and our area coordinator, Stan. The mail comes in a Mochilla, it's a leather sheath with pockets that fits over every saddle, so when a rider comes in all you have to do is lift the Mochilla off and transfer it onto the next rider's saddle... I have included some photos that should show what I'm trying to explain...

My time in Wyoming was great... Before the ride, Phyllis and I went out to the McCullough Peaks (the Wild Horse Herd Area I used to work at in Cody) for a good 6 hour ride to go horse and fossil hunting.. We got to check on some horses and found a great cache of bones and even found some great teeth. ( most are from a prehistoric boar creature). And then after the Pony Express ride, we got a call about some rouge yearling steers that had escaped and need to be rounded up... so off we went with the ponies again to chase some steers...

Way to much fun for 4 days... there are times when I wonder why I ever left Wyoming... I have a feeling it will call me back soon....