Overall the trail was fairly easy to manage, a few ups and downs with hills but if you relax, enjoy it and take in the scenery the horse will thank you for not being stressed out. My daughter who is 12 was on Blackjack and she just loved him, however, my daughter has several years of lessons and is very comfortable on a horse. My 8 year old niece was on Misty who was a fantastic horse for a beginner rider child who had no experience. Listen to Robert before you leave on the trail, he will tell you everything you need to know. But it 's nothing that you can't handle if you know how to steer and guide your horse. They want to tend to keep up with each other it seems. I got the horse named Lady who was a lovely horse, although I will say these horses can be a bit fast and you have to know how to slow them down if need be. I'm semi-nervous on a horse as I have only ridden a handful of times and only on tourist rides at that. Robert was our guide and he was very knowledgeable and helpful. My daughter loves riding horses and we now have a thing where in every state we visit we have to do a horse trail ride. We stayed a night at the hot springs and decided to do a trail ride the following afternoon. We really can't say enough good things about Robert, John and the beautiful horses that made our experience so great! If you're looking for a real experience - nothing commercialized or fake - but rather just getting out in the beauty of Montana with people who are genuine and down to earth, then Hidalgo is your place! Nothing fancy - just good people who love what they do! They all had their own personalities and it was fun to see them interact and learn about them. The horses were all beautiful, gentle and well behaved - Tuck, Misty, Lady and Gracey. Loved getting to know more about them and the area. We stopped along the way to take a break and Robert told us about some of the uses of the various plants/mosses that we had been seeing in the area. We rode up to beautiful little field - crossing onto the same path for a bit as Lewis & Clark once took, chatted with John and Robert the whole way learning about them and more about how to handle the horses - which I thought was great, to not only get a ride, but also somewhat of a lesson. We opted for the 2 hour ride, which ended up being a perfect amount of time in the saddle for us - except the 10 y/o who never wanted to get off. (My husband and I had not been on horses for over 20 years, our 14 year old had never been on a horse and the 10 year old only twice prior to this.)Īfter making sure that we were all clear on things we started on the trail. Then they gave us a lesson on how to handle the horses - showing us how to hold the reigns, what calls and motions that the horses responded to and other important safety tips. They made sure that we all were on horses that were appropriate for us and that we were comfortable in the saddle. What a great family experience we had! Robert and John are authentic cowboys (at least in our East Coast minds). Lady Luck was on our side when I found the information out for Hidalgo! (Which was not on TripAdvisor at that time - and TA is how I plan ALL our vacations so I was a little nervous about how it would go, but a promise was a promise and the 10 y/o was not going to let us forget this one!) I did a lot of searching the web and making phone calls to various stables with no luck in finding somewhere that we could get a reservation for 4 on relatively short notice. I was surprised to find that there are not that many providers of such experiences in the Bitterroot Valley. We had promised our 10 year old a trail ride experience while visiting MT for vacation.
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