Unbelievable! That is the word I would use to start to describe the feeling of seeing the initial construction begin on the new covered arena for Happy Trails. We have worked hard on raising funding for this major project and have waited patiently (ok, impatiently) for the extreme weather to break. Though we could see the ground after the snow finally disappeared in March, that didn’t meant that the ground was thawed out enough to start to grade the area. Then the ground thawed and the heavy Spring rains came. Would it ever dry out enough to get heavy equipment back there to dump enough base material to bring the ground level up to where it needed to be? The saturated ground was unforgiving for the longest time. The pad for the arena was finally in place, and materials started to arrive. 64′ wide trusses arrived on a huge semi and what a site that was! Laying on the ground, the sheer expanse of the trusses illustrates very clearly just how big the arena is going to be – 64′ wide by 120′ long will be be our finished dimensions. The holes for the main support posts were dug yesterday, the round cement pads that the posts sit on were dropped down into the holes, and the extremely long, heavy posts were placed on top of the cement pads. We could see the outline of the arena – how very exciting this is! Hopefully the 30% chance of rain that is called for today will not happen and work can continue — not that we’re eager to see more of the arena come together or anything…. 🙂 Watch Happy Trails website daily for new photos and arena construction updates!
