Ranch Stays in South Carolina

South Carolina runs from Blue Ridge foothills to Lowcountry salt marsh, and there's good riding at every elevation in between. Sumter National Forest sprawls across the western Piedmont and mountains; Francis Marion National Forest near Charleston offers flatwoods and maritime forest instead. Trail riders, lesson students, and traveling horse owners all find terrain that suits them, and the mild climate keeps much of the state ridable when northern barns are frozen shut.

Then there's Aiken. The old 'Winter Colony' has been drawing serious horse people south for generations, and its foxhunting, polo, and eventing scenes still pull world-class riders and trainers every year. The rest of the state doesn't ride in Aiken's shadow so much as alongside it: stables across the Midlands and the coast teach everything from Western pleasure and barrel racing to dressage and hunter/jumper, at every level of ambition.