Guests at Ricochet Ridge Ranch near Mendocino, California, savor breathtaking Pacific Coast scenery, as well as luxurious inns, local nightlife, and fine dining.

Dreaming of a riding vacation that delivers all that it promises? You can go online to find and book your dream trip from the comfort of your home. Here, we’ll give you a five-step planning guide, with help from The Trail Rider contributors Ben Theyre, and Kent and Charlene Krone, as well as riding tour owners/operators Bayard Fox (Equitours) and Lari Shea (Ricochet Ridge Ranch).

Along the way, we’ll show you how to customize your search and avoid pitfalls. We’ve also included key questions to ask before you put your money down, and what you can do to reduce trip-related risks.

Step 1: Define Your Goals
Before you start your online search, define what you and your fellow travelers — be they human or equine — need and want for a perfect vacation. Answer the following questions to help keep your search on track.

This group of enthusiastic Canadian trail riders hauled their horses to Palmquist Farm, in Northern Wisconsin, to experience the regions beauty and the farms relaxing ambience.

• Are you hauling your own horse, or do you need the facility to provide a mount?
• Are you traveling alone, or with family and/or friends?
• Are you traveling out of state?
• What’s the riding-fitness level of everyone in your group? How frequently does each one ride — several times a week, once a month, once in a blue moon?
• What’s each person’s horsemanship level? What can each do comfortably and safely? Do your group members ride mostly in a controlled environment (such as an arena), or on the trail (where horses may spook or balk)?
• What activities other than riding are people looking for? These might include ranch activities, hunting/fishing, rafting, hiking, archery, museum visits, live entertainment, fine dining, and/or socializing with other guests.

Step 2: Start Your Search
Once you’ve defined what your vacation needs and goals are, open up your favorite Internet search engine (such as Google or Yahoo!), and begin. We’ve created three rider profiles to help guide you through the search process.

• Rider Profile #1: You’re an experienced weekly trail rider, but your spouse and two adolescent children ride infrequently. You seek a family-friendly California resort for a week of trail riding (suitable for different levels of horsemanship), as well as other sports and activities.

When you start your search, you might use the following keywords (search terms). By using the "advanced search" option, you optimize your search (this example shows Google’s advanced search prompts):

Find web pages that have…
All these words: horse family vacation
This exact wording or phrase: California
One or more of these words: ride rides
riding trails activities
But don’t show pages that have: _________

Note that the last search term has been left blank. After the initial search, your keywords might be refined so that future search results don’t show pages that have skiing, Disneyland, Legoland, holiday, holidays or other words that resulted in pages that weren’t suitable. (Note: "Holiday" is the British word for vacation; excluding that term will reduce search results that refer to trips outside of the United States.)

Equitours South Appalachian Ride in northeast Alabama offers trails through the hardwood forests of Lookout Mountain.

• Rider Profile #2: You want to haul your gaited horse to a New England bed & barn for a long weekend of local seasonal rides. You’d like to meet other pleasure trail riders who are staying at the B&B. Your initial search might be for:

All these words: bed and barn
This exact wording or phrase: New England
One or more of these words: trails rides
riding
But don’t show pages that have: resort
luxury lessons holiday camping

You can then change subsequent search terms to narrow in on destinations that suit your needs, based on the feedback you get from the initial searches. To further refine your searches, click on the "Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more" menu item on the advanced search page, and specify where the browser should search for keywords — in the text of the page only, for example. Also specify country, such as "United States."

• Rider Profile #3: You and your partner are dedicated trail riders who want to fly to an adults-only facility in the Rockies that offers well-trained horses and a variety of trails for a four-day riding-intensive adventure. You might search for:

All these words: horseback riding
adventure vacation
This exact wording or phrase:
advanced
One or more of these words: Rocky
Mountains Rockies outfitter
But don’t show pages that have: family families children kids

In Rider Profiles #1 and #3, you’ll find what you want fairly quickly, because these types of trips are most likely provided as packages with established outfitters.

But Rider Profile #2 is more difficult, because bed & barn facilities don’t always have dedicated websites. They’re more likely to be listed in directories of similar facilities (bed & barns, bed & breakfasts, inns with stables, etc.) or in area chambers of commerce websites. If this profile dovetails with yours, you might have to refine your search multiple times and follow many links to find what you’re looking for.

Step 3: Refine Your Search
Search engines weigh the importance of keywords by the order in which they appear, ranked from left (important) to right (not as important); playing with keyword order will produce different results.

"When searching, use different combinations of words to tweak the search. Spell words creatively, as well as using standard spelling," advises Ben Theyre.

"People should try spelling words and phrases differently, with and without hyphens. For example, horse riding, horse-riding, and horseriding," says Lari Shea. "They should be fairly explicit when searching."

"We recently had a family come to us through the Make-a-Wish Foundation," adds Shea. "The girl had told her father that she wanted to canter a horse on a beach. He searched for ‘canter, horse, beach,’ and Google came up with our ranch. And she got her dream — cantering on the beach."

Here are other search tips:
• Visit YouTube.com to find referrals, trail rides, and areas of interest. Try the keywords "horse trail rides" or "horse ride trip" to find places of interest that other people recommend. The social networking sites MySpace.com and FaceBook.com may also offer pointers from trail riders and eventers.

• Look for blogs, as well as individual comments. Google "blog horse trails" or "blog horse ride" to find ride reviews, recommendations, and firsthand accounts. If you have a specific area or state you’d like to visit, add that to the keywords in your search.

• Follow links. Use your browser’s "bookmark" function, located on the top toolbar of the browser window, to store website addresses so that you can return to them later. (They’ll be stored under "bookmarks" in your browser.)

• Try these bookmarked websites to jumpstart your search — look for links to other sites that may fit your requirements: www.ranchseeker.com; http://hwl.net; http://hiddentrails.com; www.horsetrip.com; www.gordonsguide.com.

Cantering on the beach is a dream come true for many visitors to Lari Sheas Ricochet Ridge Ranch.

Step 4: Narrow Your Choices
Once you’ve found some destinations that satisfy your initial criteria, get the real scoop. Our experts all agree that you shouldn’t commit any money until you’ve contacted knowledgeable people to find out the details that can make or break your vacation. That means you need to send e-mails and make phone calls, and ask some tough questions.

• Get referrals. Talk with people who’ve stayed at the destination facility. Like you, they were looking for a great vacation, so it helps to know what was good and not-so-good about any place you’re considering.

"Follow links from websites to a facility and then to comments," says Theyre. "Find out from the facility if you can get e-mail addresses of reviews/referral. If they won’t accommodate you, cross them off your list."

• Contact outfitters and trail bosses. Find out what the riding experience is really like. "Always ask specific questions via e-mail to find info from the experienced riders/outfitters," says Shea. "The more specific questions you ask, the better."

"In turn, we outfitters have to know the weight, height, and age of everyone in your party," she adds. "We need to know how many times per week you ride, for how many years; what type of riding — walking only, or cantering and trotting. The more questions an outfitter asks you, the better."

Interview the people who are managing the rides. Find out what types of horses they have, and how they regard and treat their horses. "Some ranches have about the same feeling for a horse that they do for a motor bike, and others treat their horses like loved members of the family," says Fox.

The Krones recommend talking with an outfitter or backcountry horseman, because you can ask questions about things that might not be on a facility’s website. "We look up the Back Country Horsemen of America and call regional offices to learn about trail riding in the area," say the Krones. "We also call the forest service in the area, and ask to speak with a backcountry ranger who’s recently been in the backcountry. If that person is unavailable, we find out when they’ll be in the office and arrange to speak to them when they return."

• Ask key questions.
• What’s the ratio of horses to guests? For people who are not traveling with their own horses, find a ranch that has a high ratio of horses to guests," say the Krones. "The more horses there are for each guest to choose from, the better. It’s a good sign when the ranch has a lot of horses, rather than a one-to-one ratio — or fewer horses than guests."

• Who trains and owns the horses? The best situation is a facility that owns and trains its own horses. "If a dude ranch has its own horses and many or all of them have been raised and trained there, it shows a real commitment to an excellent riding program," says Fox.

• What are the costs of services if I bring my own horse? Know the stabling costs per night to avoid "surprise" fees. And find out the stables’ health and paperwork requirements, too.

• What kind of trail rides are there? Are they on dedicated horse trails? If you don’t ask these questions, you might find yourself on a nose-to-tail ride that shares the trail with daredevil mountain bikers and noisy ATVs.

• How many different trails can I access from the property? Or, how far are the local trailheads? If you’ve hauled your own horse to a bed & barn facility, you probably don’t want to load him back in the trailer every day to get to a trail.

• What other activities are included? If you have children or non-horsey people traveling with you, find out what can they do while you’re happily off on the trails. Will it cost extra? How many people is the activity limited to?

• What rules do you have? If your imagined vacation includes quiet after-dinner walks, or leisurely hot tub soaks just before bedtime, you should find out what rules the facility has. "Rules are important: they protect everybody," says Theyre. "Such as, no noise after a certain time; dogs must be leashed and/or under voice, sight control at all times; horses must be under control at all times. If the facility doesn’t have such rules, it’s likely you’ll have no recourse if the place is noisy or has uncontrolled animals. I like more, not fewer, rules."

• What are the cancellation policies? What happens if you suffer an injury right before the trip, which precludes riding? Get the cancellation policy in writing

before you commit any money to the trip, so you know under what circumstances you can recover some, if not all, of your payment.

Step 5: Book Your Trip
After all your research is done and your questions have been answered, it’s time to book your trip. Theyre and the Krones prefer to do this by phone, and B&Bs frequently require that you book by phone. But most destination websites have safe, easy-to-use online reservation pages, and will e-mail you a confirmation.

Now, head out and have the riding vacation of your dreams!