There are other reasons for going on a long ride, also. I speak from experience.
When I was about a sophomore in college, my friend and I went home for Christmas, as was usual. We got bored, and wanted to go back to school, but neither of us had a car. We came up with the brilliant idea of buying a couple of ponies and riding them the 200 miles or so.
We went shopping. I bought a sweet silver dapple Shetland from a trainer I met during our shopping, cost $40. My friend got a pretty grey that still had a sales sticker on his rump. We had them trailered to the Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs through a national park and has wide grassy verges the whole way, intending to follow it to within about 50 miles of our destination.
We rode bareback, no bridles, using the grey pony as a packhorse. The first night was miserable; we spent it in the entranceway of a (closed) public restroom. Remember, this was in the middle of winter. The next day, our packpony got spooked, perhaps from the cooking pot banging on him, and took off. After gathering up our belongings from about half a mile of roadside, we called it quits. We hiked down the mountain to civilization and found a place to board the ponies.
I kept the pony, who I named Genevieve, in a nicely fenced lot across the street from my apartment. The lot was basically the side yard of a sweet old lady who lived with her mother. She really liked my pony and would bring out her violin and play it for the pony. Eventually, I sold the pony to a farmer with grandchildren; he wanted her because she wasn’t mean like most ponies, he said.
Even with all that, we were so much better prepared than Knucklehead. We planned a safe route, carried supplies including horse feed, and knew how to properly care for our ponies.
I still can’t believe our parents let us do that.