Trail building equestrians of New Mexico

["marie_griffith" <marie_griffith AT q.com>]

When we talked to the lady at the visitor center (a horse person herself),
She explained that you rode the horse up to the "back country" campsites.
If you have a pack animal they would bring your gear. We planned on driving
our 4-wheel drive up with camping, tack, and hay supplies, leaving horse
trailer in the parking lot below. I would ride one horse, pony the other,
and hubby would drive truck up. If another party, we could take their gear
also and they would just ride their own horse up.

That is why we were wondering who else had already done this. Have not seen
the actual sites. The regular camping sites are wonderful down below but no
room for horses.

Marie

-----Original Message-----
From: treq-nm-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:treq-nm-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Una Smith
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 3:07 PM
To: Trail building equestrians of New Mexico
Subject: Re: [TREQ-NM] Horse Trails in Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado

Marie.Griffith wrote:
>Has anyone taken their horses to the Colorado Sand Dunes National
>Park for horse camping.

Not yet.  It is on my list of places to go with horses.


>The campsites are about 5 miles up from visitors center. You have to leave
>trailers in parking lot near visitors center.

Do you mean you have to ride the horse and pack your stuff 5 miles?
Or that you can drive the truck and ride/pony the horses to the
campsite only after you drop the trailer?  Or that you can tow the
trailer to the campsite, unload, then tow the trailer back to the
parking lot where you drop it?  I wonder what they would expect if 
someone showed up with a horse van?

Is the parking lot secure?

I expect all these questions can be answered with one or two phone
calls to the visitor center.  But why can't they explain it all on
their website?  The official FAQs are pretty sketchy on the little
details.

        Una Smith
        New Mexico
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