This evening I was thinking about my next horse pack trip and what needs to be done before the departure date arrives. That got me thinking about the reason I started Western Trail Rider. Maybe it’s worth a short blurb to remind myself, as well as to invite others to share their experience or advertise their goods and services.

During 2010, a friend of mine and I began discussing the possibility of a horse pack trip from the US/Mexico Border to the Canadian Border. As the idea grew, I began to do research and ask a lot of questions on various forums and websites. It didn’t take me long to discover that the trip has not been made but by a very few intrepid travelers, and even fewer on horseback. There is very little documentation available about the trails, mileage, water, feed, etc.  As I got deeper into the research and had made the decision to actually attempt such a trip by horse or mule, a number of people suggested that I start a web log, otherwise known as a blog, to document my research and the pack trip, so that others might be able to track of my progress and enjoy the trip with me, vicariously.

Well, I quickly realized that the available blogging services were not quite what I wanted and I didn’t care for the prospect of their advertisements on my blog and their profiting from my posts and personal information. A little study revealed that I could create my own website and host my own blog at a very reasonable cost and that with a little study and effort I could manage it myself with open source software available on the Internet.

So, Western Trail Rider was born. It is my website, created to host my blog about my own experiences and learning with regard to horses and horse packing. I have since created a facebook page, also called Western trail Rider, that supports this website and blog. Whenever I create a new post on my blog, it automatically posts to my facebook page, which links it back to the website.

Over the past several years, I have been able to revise, update, and improve the website, bringing it to what you find today at https://westerntrailrider.com. There is a photo album page, as well as a link to my Western Trail Rider Youtube channel. I have also been able to link my Delorme/Garmin GPS device to the website, so that my followers can actually track me via the linked active map.

I have also expanded the purpose of the website to include an open invitation to others who might be looking for a way to document and share their own experiences for posterity. I consider it a great means of keeping a sort of journal that is available to my kids and grandkids at the click of a few computer keys. All of the above services are available to anyone who blogs under the WTR banner.

So, if you’re looking for a way to document and store information about your horse-related experiences, or advertise your horse-related goods and services, shoot me an email. It takes me a few minutes to set up a blog site and to provide you with email addresses for the administration of it. There is no cost at all.

Your blog can be set up to post to the Western Trail Rider facebook page, like mine do, or to your own page. The whole idea being that your blog becomes searchable and “googleable” as part of Western Trail Rider’s website content. The more blogs we have on the site, the greater becomes our exposure to search engines, such as Google, Safari, Bing, etc.

For those offering services, such as guides, lodging, or outfitting, additional exposure and free advertising certainly can’t hurt your business enterprise.

The only requirements I have is that the content be family friendly and horse or mule-related. You may post events, advertise goods and services, and even take payments and donations on your blog. If there are services you would like that are not currently available, we can talk and see what we can do to rectify that. I’m pretty easy.

Talk to me and let’s see what we can do.

Tony Henrie
tony.henrie@westerntrailrider.com