Seattle ? 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 the 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.”

He also left an impression on the people he met as he rode through seven states, from Oklahoma to Washington.

Ryan reckons he camped at dozens of different places, 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 cell phone.

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 Ryan’s 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.