travel | Book Girl & Little Bear

The Last Ride of the Pony Express: My 2,000-Mile Horseback Journey into the Old West by Will Grant

Readers who enjoy real life adventure, American history, armchair travel, or horses will likely enjoy Will Grant’s new memoir. The Pony Express, in which a letter could be delivered by horseback from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento in a blistering 10 days, only lasted about 19 months from 1860 to 1861. In 2019, horse trainer and journalist Will Grant set out to ride the same 2,000-mile path. He planned to take 100 days, with two horses, riding one and leading the other with packs, riding four days, and resting one. Of course, the journey doesn’t go quite according to his plan, partly due to weather. The selection of the horses begins the tale, then Will sets out in early May, with an escort over the Missouri River bridge from St. Joseph, Missouri, into Kansas. Sensibly trailering his horses around a few cities on the route, Grant details life on horseback, the history and present state of the Pony Express stations, and the people he meets along the way. In a few arid locations, he has water and hay caches located for the horses. Grant rides his horses at a walk, not the gallop of the Pony Express, and he ponders how challenging it would have been for the Pony Express to keep enough horses ready at the stations, and supplied with enough feed and water for the horses and their handlers. Grant clearly loves horses and the American West, and is very good company for the journey. Rinker Buck’s The Oregon Trail and Life on the Mississippi are very good readalikes.

Brenda

Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure by Rinker Buck

Perfect reading for armchair travel and history buffs, by the author of the entertaining The Oregon Trail. With lots of help and plenty of advice, both good and bad, Rinker takes a year to build the flatboat Patience. With a varied crew, Rinker spent four months in 2016 traveling the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. Many people told Rinker that it couldn’t be done, especially navigating the mouth of the Wabash River and dealing with the commercial barge traffic on the Mississippi. Chapters about the Ohio River portion of the journey show his fondness for the journey, especially the kind folks he meets in Newburgh, Indiana, and other river towns. There are broken ribs and other mishaps, but Rinker is most worried about keeping the boat and its crew supplied with fuel and water. The Mississippi River is certainly more challenging to travel, including the rip rap embankments, but even there Rinker encounters helpful tug and barge captains. This is a compelling, memorable, and sometimes lighthearted tale.

Brenda