Man rides horse 2,000 miles across the West

More than halfway through his 2,000-mile horseback journey across the West, Mark Ryan stopped at Zeb Bell's ranch outside a tiny town in southern Idaho.

"He just showed up at my back door, all of a sudden there he was," recalled Bell, a pro rodeo announcer. "He introduced himself and asked to just stay here for the night. It's not the first time we've had someone like him."

Bell, 61, described Ryan as a long rider — someone who rides horseback for hundreds or thousands of miles, echoes an era long gone.

For Ryan, riding across the West on his horse, Mister Doodles, to visit a friend was a chance to see the country in a way not many other people do.

"It's part of life, you just kind of get an urge to do something before you get too old," said Ryan, 46. "There's nothing like traveling 2 miles an hour."

Ryan reckons he camped at dozens of places as he rode through seven states, stayed with more than 60 people, and his horse and mule wore down almost 10 sets of shoes. He took with him only maps — no Global Positioning System or even a cellphone.

At some places, Ryan said, he rode on highways where cars were an arm-length away from his horse. His border collie, Halfway, accompanied him to Kansas, where she blistered her feet on hot pavement and had to be picked up by his wife, Eva.

In Wyoming, the prairie was full of rattlesnakes. At one point in the Idaho backcountry, Ryan got lost for a full day.

"It didn't seem like a big of a deal at first, but it was a lot of work," Ryan said.

He left his hometown of Kingfisher, Okla. on June 2 and didn't reach the Whatcom County town of Ferndale until mid-October.

"You can't believe he actually did it," said April Smith, one of the friends Ryan was visiting. "It's kind of a John Wayne story."

While Smith and her husband waited for him, Ryan was meeting all sorts of people. There was a county sheriff and the rodeo announcer in Idaho, a widow in Kansas, and many others. He kept the names and addresses of all.

Ryan stayed with the Smiths for a few weeks, but because it was getting cold he decided not to ride his horse back to Oklahoma. He looked for rides, but ended up buying an old truck, with a horse trailer for Mister Doodles and Ryan's mule Festus, his wife said.

But the truck broke down in Oregon.

"He doesn't have the money to buy another or fix the engine," Eva Ryan said "He's waiting there for a ride. If he wants to ride back, he'll have to wait till spring."