Horse Camp for Horse Girls

Our travel took place on the ancestral lands of the Cayuse, Umatilla and Walla Walla, Suquamish, S’Klallam, and Twana/Skokomish peoples who have stewarded those lands since time immemorial.

Like most gravel things I do, my friend Katie got me out to the Kitsap Peninsula to try a challenging route I hadn’t attempted before. She sold me on the route being for ‘horse girls’ (I was a horse girl once upon a time…. cringe!). This definitely could have been a day trip, but we added the overnight at Green Mountain Horse Camp to make it a more complete trip. I did not expect to go uphill on a literal hiking trail — but such is biking with Katie! She always finds surprising and challenging things for me since she’s such an experienced and intrepid cyclist. She was very patient with my pokey ass.

It was so amazing to me that the place was practically deserted on a Saturday night in the middle of summer! We were the only people in a huge camp until the next morning when two horseback riders came through. One of them looked like Wilford Brimley and Katie couldn’t let it go.

After getting fueled on gas station snacks we wound around the peninsula on a bunch of public and private logging roads. We were both dealing with some annoying mechanical issues, but luckily Katie is a great road mechanic and we figured them out about halfway through the ride. I went back home disgusting and dusty but it was an awesome trip. I’d definitely recommend being well-stocked with snacks and bringing a water filter on this route since it’s pretty remote and there aren’t many opportunities to refill water bottles unless you are filtering yourself.