Though he enjoys a reputation as the world's leading equestrian reporter, Tom Moates is planning to set aside his computer and take up his saddle in search of mounted adventure. With the help and input of renowned North American Long Rider, Doug Preston, Tom has developed a 1200 mile route across some of the most magnificent scenery in the American Southwest. The route is a modern equestrian journey partially alongside that of the famous Historical Long Rider, Clyde Kluckhohn.  Kluckhohn, an anthropologist, made it to the then elusive and largely unknown Rainbow Natural Bridge, where he happened across Zane Grey on horseback in the middle of nowhere—one of many adventures from the trip recounted in his book, To the Foot of the Rainbow.  Tom and his Quarter Horses, Jubal and Festus, will pass through such areas as the Painted Desert, Four Corners, and Mesa Verde.

 

Long Rider Doug Preston shared these thoughts about the importance of Tom's forthcoming ride.

 

"My first long horseback journey was across the “Despoblado”, a thousand miles through Arizona and New Mexico following the trail blazed into North America by the Spanish Conquistador Coronado on his futile search for the Seven Cities of Gold.  I have made many extensive horseback journeys totaling thousands of miles retracing historic and prehistoric trails in the American Southwest and I have written several books on horses and American history (Cities of Gold  and Talking to the Ground). Tom Moates, who is himself a published writer on horses, contacted me for advice nearly a year ago when he began planning a Long Ride in the Southwest. Tom and I have discussed his proposed trip in detail. From personal experience, I can say with confidence that it is a solid plan.

 

One reason for my interest is that Tom plans to retrace part of the extraordinary historic ride made in the 1920s by the American Anthropologist Clyde Kluckhohn, described in his classic book, "To the Foot of the Rainbow." Kluckhohn was a friend of my father’s and I have long taken an interest in the long ride he made as a young man across thousands of miles in the Four Corners region, becoming one of the first Anglos to see Utah’s famous Rainbow Bridge. I even hoped to retrace his journey myself someday. I am delighted that Tom Moates is finally going to do it, at least in part," Doug wrote.

 

At no time during the course of known equestrian travel history have any horses ever made an initial expedition with one traveller and then gone on to undertake a second journey with a new Long Rider. Yet Jubal and Festus, the pure bred American Quarter Horses which will accompany Tom, already made a successful "border to border" journey from Canada to Mexico in 2008. Therefore, by completing their second journey with Tom, in the hoofprints of Preston and Kluckhohn, these two Quarter Horse Heroes will make equestrian travel history.