Long-haul trucker Angela Wood drove a covered wagon 4,500 miles across America. Her team was an unlikely match. Renegade was a half-blind paint who disliked people and work but never once refused her. Starbuck was a rescue horse found starved to 250 pounds, so weak that four women carried him to the trailer on a tarp. Shotzi was a three-pound puppy Angela pulled off death row at a kill shelter.

Angela set out from Liberty, Kentucky and headed east to the Atlantic at Sunset Beach, North Carolina. Then she turned west and drove all the way to the Pacific. The whole trip took 15 months.

On the road, Angela’s wagon sank so deep in Arkansas gumbo mud that it took a backhoe to pull it out. A runaway in Asheville scalped her and put Shotzi in the pound on Thanksgiving Eve. A rattlesnake struck Renegade on the Oregon Trail. When Renegade was injured 175 miles from the finish, Starbuck carried her alone into the Pacific at Bodega Bay.

In this conversation, Angela talks about growing up wild in the mountains of Idaho, gentling horses instead of breaking them, the strangers who fed her nearly every mile and the trip’s mission of raising money for No Kid Hungry. She also explains why she says, “If you wait for perfect, you’re never gonna do it.”

Guest: Angela Wood — Long-haul trucker who drove a covered wagon 4,500 miles coast to coast

Links: https://challengeamericaequinetrek.wordpress.com/

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Swallowed by Arkansas mud
• (01:13) - Meet Angela, Renegade, Starbuck and Shotzi
• (11:28) - A wagon three days old and the road east from Kentucky
• (22:24) - Logging trucks, Love Valley and the Atlantic at Sunset Beach
• (30:16) - Growing up wild in the mountains of Idaho
• (35:47) - A pot of beans and the cycle of poverty
• (47:09) - Bogged in Arkansas: the backhoe rescue and cattle guard gates
• (01:04:16) - The Oregon Trail, rattlesnakes and "If you wait for perfect"
• (01:38:29) - Scalped in the Asheville runaway and the kindness of strangers
• (01:57:19) - Starbuck alone to the Pacific and the music of horse time

People: Creators & Guests

• Angela Wood - Guest

Click here to view the episode transcript.
For more stories of long riders, sailors, ramblers, adventurers and dreamers finding their way, visit TravelGrit.com.

Thies Matzen and his wife Kicki Ericson have sailed Wanderer III — the same 30-foot wooden sloop that legendary cruising sailors Eric and Susan Hiscock wrote about — more than 150,000 bluewater miles, much of it in the Southern Ocean. This includes two years overwintering at South Georgia Island under brutal conditions and a voyage to Antarctica aboard the smallest traditionally planked wooden boat to ever sail there. Along the way they won the Blue Water Award from the Cruising Club of America, one of the most prestigious honors in offshore sailing. In this episode, Thies talks about life aboard one of the most storied small boats in sailing history, navigating by sextant and stars in the Southern Ocean, what the ancient Polynesian navigators taught him about finding your place in the world, and why a small boat keeps the world big.

Guest: Thies Matzen — Sailor, shipwright, and offshore voyager who has spent decades aboard Wanderer III navigating the Southern Ocean by sextant and stars.
Links: [Guest website] Chapters: People: Creators & Guests

• Thies Matzen - Guest

For more stories of long riders, sailors, ramblers, adventurers, and dreamers finding their way, visit TravelGrit.com.

Sven Yrvind was beaten by his teachers, locked up for desertion and learned the value of books from a psychopath. Then he built a boat in his mother's basement and sailed into legend.
In this Travel Grit episode, the legendary Swedish sailor and boat builder talks about crossing the Atlantic in his self-built twenty-foot Bris, teaching navigation to islanders on Tristan da Cunha, rounding Cape Horn solo in winter, and why at eighty-six he's still building boats and planning his next ocean passage.[Episode description goes here]

Guest: [Sven Yrvind — Swedish sailor, boat builder, and writer who has spent his life crossing oceans solo in tiny boats of his own construction and design.

Links:
Yrvind.com
YouTube Sven Yrvind

People:

Click here to view the episode transcript.

For more stories of long riders, sailors, ramblers, adventurers, and dreamers finding their way, visit TravelGrit.com.