Dressage in Michigan

Two peninsulas, four Great Lakes shorelines, and thousands of miles of designated horse trails, Michigan gives riders a lot of map to work with. The Upper Peninsula is raw, forested wilderness; the Lower Peninsula trades that for rolling farmland and big state forests. Trail systems thread through the Manistee National Forest, the wider Huron-Manistee National Forests, and a long list of state parks, and the barns follow: guest ranches, day-ride trail stables, and dedicated riding academies.

'Up North', the Lower Peninsula's northern tier, is where the trail riding concentrates. Stables near Traverse City, Petoskey, and Mackinaw City put riders onto routes that blaze with color in October and go quiet under snow by December. Downstate, the population centers around Grand Rapids, Lansing, and Detroit support the densest cluster of boarding and training barns in the state. Many specialize (English hunt seat here, Western pleasure there), with lessons, clinics, and show schedules to match.