Archives for January 2010

Got an early start, and decided to skip our planned Georgia stop and head straight for Florida. Weather has been so ridiculously cold we decided to get as far south as possible as fast as possible. We headed to Osceola National Forest near Lake City, made good time and arrive at the ranger station by about 3:00 pm. Before leaving, we went to great pains to get our horses the new 6-month passports because we had heard how tough it was to get into Florida without all of the up-to-day paperwork, Coggins and health certificates and so on. So when we pulled into the Agricultural Inspections station, Hubby was ready to go with our shiny new passports. The inspectors said they were the first ones they had ever seen! They had heard about them, but our were their first! Passed through, no problem!

Once we got into Osceola, we ran into a lot of hunting traffic. Missed a turn and had to take a side road, which was pretty rough in places, made harder by the number of trucks that were parked along the edge of the one-lane road. Last weekend for general gun season, apparently, and the ranger said it would be much quieter by Monday. Since our plan is to take Sunday off, that works fine with us!

Arrived in the campground next to the West Tower, which is free, around 4:30. It has a central spigot and a flush toilet. Several larger trailers were here for the hunters, a bus with a family living in it, surrounded by tents and using two of the four covered stall as their laundry-drying space. Another van with an older man apparently living in it was there as well. Not exactly uptown, but sometimes you only get what you pay for. Though we had originally planned on putting the horses in the stalls overnight (forecast temps were STILL in the teens, despite being in Florida), we decided against it, and circled the wagons in a way that would protect them from the north wind, and highlined them just outside the patio door. Cocktail hour started a little late, but we were settled in, quite possibly for the week!

Got out a little later than we hoped, primarily because our client was making several TV appearances this morning we wanted to see, then got on the road heading south, in search of warmer weather. Our original plan was to stop at Lee State Natural Area in South Carolina again, but I had a very unsatisfactory conversation with them en route. Because it was supposed to be in the teens overnight, we wanted to put the horses in one of the stalls they have there near the arena. Obviously, we wanted to park nearby to keep an eye on them. Unfortunately, the park manager wouldn’t allow us to do that for reasons beyond comprehension. It’s a group area, and we would have to pay the group rate ($300), but then again, we’d have to fill out an application and get it approved through the central office beforehand…. It became so ridiculous and absurd, I looked for an alternative, and found an excellent one at the Poinsett State Park about another hour farther south.

The ranger there was delightful, receptive and welcoming. Their campground area was very rustic, with a locked gate and one central water spigot, and open stalls made out of full-size pine logs. We were th only tenants, and the fee was about $10. The area was very sheltered, so even though the stalls weren’t covered, we let the horses stay out instead of putting them in the trailer, as there was no wind at all. There’s a multi-use trail nearby, and though we didn’t stay to ride, we’ll definitely be back to this one!

Spend all day yesterday with a client, a very successful session by all accounts.
Today, we were on the road before 8:00 am, back down to Dee and Paul’s by mid-afternoon, spent the day doing laundry, planning our immediate future. Shared a bottle of Dee’s wine and some home-made pea soup I brought and spent the evening chatting away! Alas, Paul had come down with a terrible cold or flu, and was banished to the living room, while we set up shop in her very comfy kitchen. Went to be early, ready for an early start tomorrow

Slept late (yeah! There’s nothing like the luxury of sleeping late, is there?), finally made it into the house around 10:30, where the conversations began immediately. Swapping stories is always interesting with Dee and Paul, and in fact, Dee is even in the process of writing a book on some of her experiences with her horses over the years. Finally packed up and left in the RV with the dogs around 4:00, leaving our horses in their expert care while we followed our primary objective, work, for a day with a client in Richmond. Found out they had had a foot of snow a few days before Christmas, the parking lots still had tall piles of the white stuff. Needless to say, it continues to be cold, much colder than average for this time of year, and we’re looking forward to heading south again, which may be all the way to Florida, though I hear they have frost warnings all the way to Miami! More of that global warming, eh?

Had a lovely Indian meal (our favorite ethnic cuisine, though Thai comes close!), then settled down in the parking lot of the hotel where we will be working tomorrow. Gotta love being able to sleep in your own bed every night, no matter where you are! As Buckaroo Bonzai would say, “Everywhere you go, there you are!”

Packed up this morning, spent the day driving to the Cherry Hill Farm B&B in Buffalo Junction, VA, to visit with our new friends Dee and Paul, whom we met on our last journey through the area last fall. They have a lovely old farm with some paddocks and barns out back, so they are a very horse-friendly place. They also have quite a story to tell about their life with horses, should you every get around this way, and they love to hear everyone elses’ horse stories, too!
Arrived around 3:00, the horses were thrilled to have a paddock of their own and a stall full of delightful shavings, which they promptly put to use by having a good roll. For any non-horse person who hasn’t seen it, there’s nothing quite as hysterical as watching a horse try to roll!
We chatted the rest of the afternoon, had a lovely stew for dinner, and watched a promising Western starring Peirce Brosnan and Liam Neeson. Sounds good, right? Ummm… not so much. Great scenery and production value, a bit thin on plot, but it had plenty of horses in it (though more than the usual number were shot out from under their riders, so caveat emptor!)

Took the day off today, if you can consider spending half the day doing bookkeeping a “day off”. I swear, if our government would only figure out how many more millions of hours of productivity could be gained by having a tax code that didn’t require you to log in, categorize and save every darn receipt and expense a small businessperson makes, our economy would boom in no time. How about an across the board 10% tax on all income? How easy would that be? Just keep track of income, and at the end of the quarter or the year, you just send it in with a postcard that says, “1. How much income did you receive?, 2. Multiply by .10, 3. Send this amount in!” Well, we can dream, can’t we? 🙂

Woke up to a cold, sunny morning. Decided to take a quick shopping trip before we went riding, just to let it warm up a bit. Ended up leaving the campsite on horseback about 12:30 or so. We had decided to take the dogs with us, as there were no other horse campers at all, and almost no one else in the park. Our golden lab mix is fine with the horses on the trail, they don’t bother each other at all, but our Jack Russell beagle mix hasn’t quite figured it out, likes to bark and fuss. Hubby’s horse has no problem with him, but my horse sometimes loses patience and reacts. Had a few scary moments when Hubby cut a corner off the road, and my horse suddenly realized he wasn’t in the lead anymore, and pitched a little fit about it, jumping and jiving. Fortunately we were near the arena, so I took him in again and ran him around to get him settled. The little dog, Billy, ran around with us a bit, which was a good thing to get them both used to being together, and that seemed to work. We set off on the trail again, but the cold was definitely making everybody frisky. At one point I decided to ask for a trot, which I got for about 6 paces, then he decided he wanted to canter. I tried to pull him back into a trot, and he decided he wanted to gallop, with the added excitement of him looking for low branches as well (he’s quite the comedian, my horse). He was too far to one side of the trail to pull a one-rein stop, so I had to hang on until the trail widened enough for me to be able to do it. A bit more harrowing than I like, but everyone was safe in the end. Hubby’s horse galloped behind as well, but he was in better control. Needless to say, we walked quietly the rest of the way home..

Forecast calling for upper teens overnight (so much for global warming), so we decided to put the horses in the trailer for warmth before we went to bed. Another exciting day in the woods!

Happy New Year! Now begins the true Year of the Horse!

The new year slipped in with little notice by us, having gone to sleep promptly at about 10:00 pm last night. Slept through to 9:00 am, feeling much more rested and relaxed, understandable after 11 hours of sleep!

After a leisurely breakfast (there was still some intermittent rain, so we didn’t see the point in rushing, knowing the rain would be through around noon or so), Lester arrived to sign us in. Hubby and I had decided to stay through Monday morning, as the location was lovely, the cell phone signal was excellent, and we had some reading and video preparation to do before meeting our client next Wednesday. The entire bill for four nights, factoring in weekday rates, weekend rates and winter rates, came to $58.28. Now that’s more like it! Water and electric on-site, a warm bathhouse for those inclined, and an easy pull-through to boot! Couldn’t wait to see what the trails looked like!

We soon found out. The rain trickled off a little later than scheduled (a last minute pop up shower reared it’s ugly head!), but we started getting the horses ready anyway. Mine needed a quick filing of his front hooves, which was done in short order. Ordinarily we run our horses barefoot, and use Easyboot Epics on the front when the terrain is questionable. There was nothing questionable about the trails here, however, as they were clearly nothing more than sand, pine needles, and occasional mud from all the rain, absolutely nothing warranting boots today! Unshod horses welcome here.

We set out down the Loop Road, which is shared by vehicles (though there weren’t any out today). The road led us to the Show Ring and primitive equestrian camping area. My horse had been particularly frisky on the ride up, not surprising having not been ridden for about six weeks, so I took the opportunity to take him into the ring and settle him down. We trotted a bit, then I took him into a canter. When he’s fresh, he has a habit of doing a little leaping and head tossing when he moves from the trot to a canter, so we did it several times until he finally stopped his silliness. From there we headed out to the trails.

The trails here are a series of looping intertwining, like spaghetti, according to the map. While there are signs posted for which trails are horse trails, there are no points of reference on the trails to the maps, but as everything eventually loops back to either the road or to the show ring, it’s hard to get lost. As this was Day One of riding, we only stayed out about two hours, having had several trots, one surprise canter, and an excellent controlled trot and canter on the road back to the campground, which again, is all hard-packed sand. The horses truly seemed to enjoy themselves, they behaved surprised that it was so short a trip, but we wanted them to look forward to the next two days, which are supposed to be sunny, albeit colder, with highs in the low 40s. Not exactly the 60-70 degrees we set out to find, but this leg of the journey was following work, the next leg will be to follow weather!

Another bowl of pea soup, a lovely cocktail, and we’re all settled down for the night. ‘Til tomorrow!

On the way to the Trading Post this morning, we discussed whether we wanted to stay here another night and hope the weather cleared for a ride on Friday (our original plan), or if we wanted to drive on to our next stop on a drizzly day we knew we didn’t want to ride in, and hope we could ride Friday at our next location. We hadn’t made a decision when we walked into the Trading Post, but the decision was quickly made for us.

The cost of the campground site was $25, a little higher than usual for us for just electric and water, but we figured because we couldn’t highline the horses in the campground, the fee must include the stabling. Boy, were we ever wrong! Stalls were an additional $18 EACH per night, plus we had to pay a $5 parking fee for EACH vehicle. Total cost for one night – $66.00! The cashier couldn’t honor Hubby’s Golden Age Passport (which gives a 50% discount to cardholders in all Federal lands, but this was State so they didn’t accept it), but did manage to give him a senior discount, a whopping $5 off the campsite, period. Maybe that’s affordable to some, but for us, and our plans to spend the whole year traveling this way, was way too dear. Without speaking, one look at each other was enough to confirm we were leaving today.

We packed up, loaded the horses, cleaned out the stalls (for $18 each it would’ve been nice if they did it, but c’est la vie!) and were heading out by noon.

It rained off and on for the entire trip, though by the time we arrived at our next location, Lee State Natural Area near Bishopville, SC, we had actually gotten ahead of it just a bit, and had just a little bit of time to get set up before it rolled back in on top of us. Lee State is just a mile off I-20, but it’s a little piece of heaven, full of pine trees and sandy trails. I had spoken with Lester the manager on the phone, and he said to just come in and find a spot in the equestrian campground, all were available except the ones already filled and one other. We drove in, found a perfect spot in no time, great trees for highlining the horses. A nice young man nearby came to tell us that there had been some electrical problems on that site with the 20 amp, but as we only needed the 30, he said that should be fine.

About the time we were finishing setting up, Lester arrived, but said “no worries” he’d come around in the morning to take care of business. We happily agreed, having already confirmed the rates for a water/electric site was about $15/night! We finished the evening with some lovely homemade pea soup I had canned before we left home, watched a movie on DVR and fell into bed, still exhausted, but getting better all the time!