 More
than halfway through his 2,000-mile horseback journey across
the West, Mark Ryan stopped at Zeb Bell's ranch outside a
tiny town in southern Idaho.
"He just showed up at my
back door, all of the sudden there he was," recalled Bell, a
pro rodeo announcer. "He introduced himself, and asked to
just stay here for the night. It's not the first time we've
had someone like him."
Bell, 61, described Ryan as a
long rider - someone who rides horseback for hundreds or
thousands of miles, echoes an era long gone.
For
Ryan, riding across the West on his horse - Mister Doodles -
to visit a friend was a chance to see the country in a way
not many other people do.
"It's part of life, you
just kind of get an urge to do something before you get too
old," said Ryan, 46. "There's nothing like traveling 2 miles
an hour."
He also left an impression on the people he
met as he rode through seven states, from Oklahoma to
Washington.
Ryan reckons he camped at dozens of
different places, stayed with more than 60 people, and his
horse and mule wore down almost 10 sets of shoes. He took
with him only maps, no Global Positioning System or even a
cell phone.
At some places, Ryan said, he rode on
highways where cars were an arm-length away from his horse.
His border collie, Halfway, accompanied him to Kansas, where
she blistered her feet on hot pavement and had to be picked
up by Ryan's wife, Eva.
In Wyoming, the prairie was
full of rattlesnakes. At one point in the Idaho backcountry,
Ryan got lost for a full day.
"It didn't seem like a
big of a deal at first, but it was a lot of work," Ryan
said. "Some of them mountains, boy, it got cold. Frost on
the tent, rainy days and a lot of hot days. All we carried
was 60 pounds of gear, at times 50 pounds of feed."
He left his hometown of Kingfisher, Okla., on June 2 and
didn't reach Ferndale, Wash., about 20 miles south of the
Canadian border, until mid-October, almost five months on
the road.
"You can't believe he actually did it,"
said April Smith, one of the friends Ryan was visiting.
"It's kind of a John Wayne story."
Source:
http://www.komonews.com/news/34552594.html
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