Traveling With Horses

Hey fellow horse adventurer! I am so glad you stopped by!

If you are like me you are probably prepping to drive cross country with a horse or two and are a bit overwhelmed with figuring out where to layover, how to care for your horse in super hot weather and the stress of finding horse trailer accessible gas stations…Where you can actually turn around!!!

Take a breath! You are in the right place. In September of 2024 my family and I hauled two of our Mustangs over 5000 miles from WA state to Lexington, KY and back again for the Mustang Classic competition. We learned a TON and here I am going to share a few of the “Tips & Tricks” I learned along the road.

I hope you find this helpful on your own adventures! Happy Travels!

Feeding Your Horse While Traveling.

Hauling long distance can be stressful and taxing on horses resulting in weight-loss. I had to make sure my Mustang, Dazzle, was in top condition when we arrived in Lexington to compete in the Mustang Classic. It was a 3-day eventing style competition and Dazzle was going to need to be in peak physical condition to be able to successfully complete the competition. Loosing weight was not an option… So I started doing research and came up with a feeding plan. A month before leaving I started slowing increasing the amount of grain and alfalfa she was eating so that she would be accustom to the higher volume and hopefully pack on a few extra pounds for the trip.

Here is what Dazzle ate while we were traveling:

Trailer Loading Tip: All our horses load great but… we were concerned that after spending several day on the road they may start getting sick and tired of loading into the hot metal box and bouncing down the road for hours on end…I mean got sick of traveling in the air-conditioned cab…I can’t imagine being a horse. We needed a way to make the trailer “Fun” so we started giving our Mustang’s their morning grain in the trailer. Within a few days they were self-loading and practically dragging us into the trailer each morning! Knowing a delicious morning snack awaited them inside the trailer made it so they they couldn’t wait to load back up. I think we all can agree that sometimes snacks just make life easier:)

Figuring out where to sleep…

Finding layovers was probably one of the biggest challenges when planning our trip. Thankfully I have an awesome grandfather who spent countless hours mapping out my trip, finding us some AWESOME layovers! Not only did I need a place that could accommodate my 35ft horse trailer, but also had a place for my two horses and ideally somewhere I could exercise them.

That’s when we discovered the “Horse Hotel” website. A list of horse layovers all throughout the USA. We planned all of our stops from this website expect for our layover in Nebraska…their were no horse hotels close to our route so we stayed at a local fair-grounds.

Favorite Website For Finding Layovers: https://horsemotel.com

Favorite Gas Stations: “Loves” is hands down my all time favorite Gas Station. Not only are they set up to accommodate large rigs, they also carry healthy snacks and food. Including salads, wraps and my personal favorite, sliced fresh fruit.

The “Pilot”, “Sinclair” and “Flying J” are also good options and are typically easy to access. My biggest advice would be to look at an arial map to make sure it looks easy to access from the Highway. Early on in our long distant traveling we made the mistake of following our GPS into some very tight predicaments…WAY too much stress!

Monitoring the Horses:

When it comes to our horses we are a bit of Helicopter Parents…So for our peace of mind we NEEDED to be able to see the horses while we were on the road;)

We bought the eRapta Magnetic Wireless Backup Camera and it works GREAT! We had to make sure to charge it at night but it lasted easily throughout the day and had great video quality.

Here is a link: Camera On Amazon.

We also Installed the Taylor Wireless Digital Indoor/Outdoor Thermometer so that we could see how hot it was in the trailer. Check it out> Thermometer on Amazon

Both of these installments gave us so much piece of mind while traveling and enabled us to stay driving longer without having to make stops to check on the horses.