Families begin four-day trek to Michigan

By DAVID LANDOW
Goshen News Staff Writer

Carson City or bust! With umbrellas for shade and seated comfortably in collapsible camp chairs on top of their homemade wagon, two Amish families from the Goshen and Nappanee area are trekking north to Carson City, Mich.

The trip will take the nine men, women and children four days and will cover more than 150 miles.

“We hope we will make it there safely,” Everett Martin said. “If the horses can survive it, we can survive it.”

Everett Martin and Ernest Martin, who are cousins, have been planning this trip for over a year to visit Everett Martin’s brothers as well as other friends and family in Carson City, which is in central Michigan north of Lansing.

The cousins saw a wagon they liked at an auction but decided that building one themselves would be cheaper than buying one. Since Everett works in construction and Ernest is a welder, they had the necessary skills between them to build it. Construction took about two weeks.

In addition to the wagon, they also had to condition their two standard bred horses by driving them for a couple of miles every day.

With the wagon, food and people, the horses are pulling around 2,000 pounds.

The Martins picked a route along less-traveled county roads since they have to walk the horses most of the way because trotting them would wear them out very quickly. They plan on stopping every three hours or so to give the horses a rest.

The current plan is to camp along the road on the way up and to stay in Carson City for a couple of days, but that all depends on whether the horses will be recovered in time for the trip back.

“That we will find out,” Everett Martin said. “We don’t know yet.”

Even though they were only 10 miles on their way, Ernest said they were already talking about their next trip.

Ernest said to tell their friends and family that they are already feeling lonely.