A few Saturdays ago, the three of us headed to Dollywood to see it all decked out for Christmas. It was a sunny and warm (in the 60′s) and we live only about an hour or so away. One of my favorite parts about Dollywood was a visit to the carriage maker. The park has real craftsmen on staff doing things (mostly) the old-fashioned way. It’s part theme park attraction and part craft preservation. I’ve never before seen someone build a carriage. What struck me the most is how reasonably priced the carriages were. You can get yourself a fancy brand new one or two-horse carriage, complete with hydraulic brake system for around $2,500. Now that’s a lot of money but you get a hand-built horse carriage made from high quality parts that can be used for pleasure riding, parades, weddings…whatever. If we find ourselves with $2,500 too much one year, I’d love to buy one of these. I can’t even imagine one of our spirited horses pulling a carriage but I’m sure they’d be fine with training. Of course, Moonshine and Valentine probably couldn’t be paired due to their size differences so I guess we’d need a one-horse carriage. Mikki wants a doctor’s carriage like the one in the picture above. I think it would be fun to have a wagon that seats four. And I could probably justify spending that much money by saying we’d use it to make money giving rides at parades, fairs and other events. It would be an investment! Riiiiight.
Here’s a picture of an unpainted carriage up close:
And here’s a picture of the carriage shop inside:
Do any of you have a carriage for your horse(s)?
My friends bought a carriage (it was so beautiful) and they ended up never using it, sold the horse they bought to pull it and sold it.
My mom has a plan though. She is going to ride until she is 70 and drive horses until she is 80. I was thinking she needs to tack on another 10 years to those, my friend Betty just turned 76 and still rides like the wind!
It was nice to visit, I’ll come back often.
Thanks for the visit, Jerri. Like so many other things we’ve bought and rarely used, I wonder if this would be the case with us as well. I can see us using it at first, maybe during a couple parades and then parking it, only to see it for far less than we paid for it.
Wow, your mom is 70 and riding still? And your friend at 76? That’s awesome! Girl power. We almost never see older people riding and assumed that there comes an age where most people don’t want to or can’t manage horses anymore.