Susan H. was riding ponies before she could tie her shoes. She grew up on a dairy farm in Washington State, the sixth of six kids, each of whom was given a horse to ride, so she didn't think anything of it at the time. It was simply farm life. But that early ease in the saddle would prove to be the beginning of something that would take her around the entire planet.
In 1998 Susan’s oldest brother died, and she found herself looking for something to pull her out of the grief. What she ended up with was a simple, almost stubborn goal: to ride a horse in every single state. It was her reason to rise. Her reason to arrange. Her reason to keep moving on. Little did she know it would take her over three decades and would eventually go far beyond state lines.
“That's when I was inspired to ride a horse in every state,” she says.
She set out to follow a path that would carry her far beyond what she first imagined.
In August 2025, at 80 years old, Susan reached the finish line in Maryland. Fifty states. Every one of them on horseback.
Looking back, she laughs, “My father didn’t realize what he was setting in motion when he made sure all six of us had a horse to ride.”
A Goal That Kept Growing
At some point it was no longer just a challenge about the states. Ultimately, Susan rode in 14 countries, on every continent except Antarctica, which, as she points out, doesn’t have horses.
She has strolled through London’s Kensington Gardens, sat atop an Andalusian in a Spanish bullring, walked through Petra, an ancient city in Jordan, and toured Angkor Wat in Cambodia on volunteer mission trips. In Rwanda, the Philippines, Australia, Mexico, and Honduras she has ridden. In February 2026, she crossed the pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx in Egypt.
“I had to pinch myself to believe I was actually riding in Kensington Park where the Queen has ridden,” she marvels.
Back home, several of the trips that helped her cross states off the list came through Road Scholar, the nonprofit educational travel organization built for lifelong learners. She rode solo through South Dakota's Badlands on a program called Best of the Dakotas, catching a glimpse of the Crazy Horse memorial along the way. In Pennsylvania, a Road Scholar trip took her onto the actual ground at Gettysburg, riding the same route Confederate troops used to position themselves before the battle on July 1, 1863.
Passing It Down
One of Susan's favorite trips wasn't solo at all. In 2023, she brought her granddaughter Alexa along on a Road Scholar program to Mackinac Island, Michigan, where cars aren't allowed and everyone gets around by bike, horse-drawn carriage, or horseback.
The two of them rode together through the island's forest trails and had tea at the historic Grand Hotel. It's the kind of memory Susan actively goes looking for now, a way of handing her love of travel and animals down to the next generation. She's already eyeing a future grandparent-grandchild trip built around the Misty of Chincoteague story.
Susan keeps a journal of every ride she's ever taken, and it's become something like a second passport. Flipping through it brings back a Friesian in Vermont, an Arabian cantering through Massachusetts wildflowers, and a horse from the Lakota Indian Nation in Connecticut. She credits the animals themselves as much as the destinations. As she put it, "horses respond to you."
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No Sign of Slowing Down
Turning 80 didn't put a stop to any of it. Susan recently traveled to Rwanda to visit a young woman she has sponsored for eight years through a nonprofit and made time for a ride through Kigali while she was there. Her list of what's next is long: a Boston history trip, Machu Picchu, and the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. She hasn't entirely ruled out Antarctica either, even though it would mean trading her riding boots for snow boots.
Susan's story lands squarely in the kind of milestone a lot of people quietly hope is still possible after 80: not just staying active, but starting something in grief and turning it into a decades-long adventure that reshaped an entire life. Thirty-two years after she first climbed into a saddle looking for a way through loss, she's still looking for the next trail.
“My bucket list will never be empty,” she says with a smile. “As I fulfill one or two things, I seem to add two or three more.”
You can read Susan's story at Road Scholar.com.
