Xperience Days aims to provide customers with any updates relating to Xperience Days along with the latest news from the gifts and experience gifts industry. The following is an article from Betty McMillen for The Union Tribune.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Take a trip through East County, not on its roads but into its past, with tour guides who know their terrain. They are local historians with stories to share and a knack for tracing the winding, wild roots of the things around us today. Each week offers a new tale from a different part of East County.

Horseback riding in Lakeside has changed a lot over the years. Horsewoman Meave Hall told me about some of her experiences in the early '50s when she was a teenage girl.

It seems that Hall and her girlfriends would go horse camping up in the Laguna Mountains every summer. Hardly anyone had horse trailers in those days, so they would pack up their horses and ride all the way to camp. It was a two-day trip just getting to the Laguna Stables. Her grandmother had a cabin in Descanso, so the tired riders and horses would rest up there. Of course the days were very hot and there were no trees for shade between Lakeside and Japatul, so they would take off riding at night. They would wait for a full moon night so they could see better. The girls would laugh and sing and have the best times, sometimes they would ride side saddle or backward just to give their bottoms a rest. Hall said that their voices would be just about gone by the time they got to horse camp.

After a week of camping with no place to bathe, one time the girls decided to take a bath in the cow's watering trough.

“We were up to our necks in the water when along came the cutest cowboy I had ever seen in my life, he didn't like us bathing in his cow's drinking water, but I'll bet he had some good stories to tell back at the ranch house,” Hall said.

One year Hall's girlfriend couldn't go when they had planned, so Hall took off on her own thinking her friend would arrive later. After a week of camping by herself, she was getting lonely but said she never was afraid. Since her father was a ranger and Hall knew a lot of folks from all the years of camping, she just didn't have any fear. Also she was entertained by the cute Air Force boys who were stationed up there.

Finding out that her friend wasn't coming after all, she decided to go back to Lakeside.

Unfortunately she had waited a little too late in the day to start out. Now the full moon was gone and it was pitch black out there and she was on a borrowed horse that had thrown her earlier. She admits she was getting scared because there was barbed wire across some of the trails and she would have to get off the horse to open and close gates as she crossed some of the large ranches.

“All of a sudden some white faced cattle would jump out and scare us,” Hall said.

By the time she had hurried home, the horse was all lathered up and had wet and dried sweat all over him. Wouldn't you know that the owner of the horse showed up right about that time? Hall was so embarrassed . . . but they had survived.

Nowadays Hall lives at her Palm Row Ranch in Lakeside. Her historic ranch house and barn were built in 1910 and she still rides, boards and trains horses and gives riding lessons.