Archives for March 2010

Had several hours with our client last night, making it a late night, and we also ended up scheduling another session for Saturday. We both felt so tired, and knowing we had another day of work, we decided to rest as much as possible. I did laundry (Pohick Bay has machines in their bathhouse), then we spent the afternoon watching movies and trying to relax. We felt like we hadn’t had a break for some time, with the long trip from Texas, and with so much more to do in the next week or two, we wanted to recharge our batteries a bit. Still felt tired at the end of the day, but at least we didn’t add to it. And no, I didn’t get around to grooming the winter coats ofrf the horses yet :-).

While we were supposed to meet with our client in the early afternoon, the schedule changed at the last minute to the evening, so Hubby and I decided to turn our B-day dinner into a B-day lunch at a little Indian restaurant down in Woodbridge. Then we did some essential shopping before coming back to camp and changing back into our dress clothes and heading downtown. Horses are looking good, but they really need a good grooming to get off their winter coats. May have a chance tomorrow, if we can muster the energy!

Had a great night’s sleep, then headed back to the church first thing after breakfast to get a “little” work done. Didn’t get back till past when lunch should have been served. Getting tired of all this nonsense with Windows 7, but I do seem to be getting the hang of it. Still don’t have drivers for my phone as a modem or my printer, my bookkeeping system didn’t seem to be saved (I didn’t think it would, but I was hoping), and my Google Earth bookmarks may or may not be on here somewhere, I’m still looking. Anyway, I’m getting sick of it all, and I’m looking forward to forcing myself into actually taking a day off one of these days! The horses are doing great, the long drive yesterday seemed to bother them not one bit, they’re putting on weight like crazy, almost back to normal, and I can’t wait to go riding again! The weather has been terrific, though, so we have that to be grateful for.

Headed out early again, with yet another change in plans. We decided our two long hops plan and getting in a day early to rest would be better than our original three short hops plan. It was a straight shot on the freeway, rather than having to travel the backroads, so we’d actually end up saving time and gas. So off we went, with a bead on one of our favorite places, Pohick Bay, anticipating an arrival about 5:30. We made good time, and actually arrived at just before 5:00, with lots of daylight left to get the horses settled in and actually have an evening. Since there is no wireless signal at Pohick Bay yet (they’re still working on it), I had to go looking for a wireless signal. Ordinarily I would go down to a shopping center a few miles away, but it occurred to me that the Gunston Hall next door might have one, so I headed over there. Unfortunately the gate was locked, so I pulled into a little Baptist Church to turn around, and lo and behold, there was an open signal there. I checked my email and did some more downloading, which took much longer than expected (duh!), and again, made it back about dark, to a starving and cranky Hubby. At least I didn’t have to go far!

At the start of the day, our plans were to either take three short hops to DC or two long hops with a day off before we worked with our client. We decided on the three short hops, which would give me a little more time resolving the computer issues. Having made that decision, we headed for Lee State Park in South Carolina, a nice little park near I-20. Before we arrived, I found a Shoneys with a wireless signal, so the plan was that I would work on solving those problems for several hours. Hubby decided to go and get the horses packed in and I would follow up when I could. That took longer than I thought (big surprise there!), and I didn’t arrive at camp until almost completely dark. A quick setup, and off to bed!

Having wasted so much time trying to (unsuccessfuly) solve my computer problem, we recalculated our trip and faced the inevitability that we were behind schedule and would have to make it up, and soon. Fortunately, from Shockaloe to our next stop was a straight shot on I-20, and both the beginning and end were only a short distance from the highway, so we decided to make the entire 400 miles up today. By now the horses were seasoned travelers, and with few hills and curves to contend with, we felt they could do the 8 hours with no problem, providing they got plenty of hay and water along the way. We got out early and drove unimpeded for hours, stopping only for the ocassional break. We had originally planned to go back to Hard Labor State Park, but really didn’t like their high fees ($25 per campsite, $18 per stall, plus entrance fees), and as we progressed, we made such good time we decided to try for the next horse camp along the way, at the AH Stephens State Park, about another 40 miles on. We hadn’t been there before, but since daylight savings started last night, and the horses seemed fine, we decided to go for it. We arrived around 6:00 EDT to a lovely, well-appointed park. Good signage made finding the horse camping area easy, maps were in the mailbox at the park office (which, of course, had already closed), and I quickly checked and discovered there was a wireless signal coming from the office. We were WAY too tired to do anything at that moment but get set up, feed the animals and us, and go to bed. There was water at every site, and there was construction going on improving the sites from rustic to a graveled pad. Having lost TWO hours today (from Daylight Savings and from going from Central to Eastern time), we were both feeling jet-lagged and ready for bed, where we were headed early.

Though we were alone when we arrived at Gum Springs, several folks came in overnight, and more arrived in the morning. Then a ranger came by to tell us they were doing a prescribed burn near part of the trail, so in the end, we were glad we weren’t staying anyway. Proof positive that everything works out in the end, if you just stick it out long enough! I just hope the same is true with my new computer, which is still defying my will. Managed to get online at one stop and check my email through the Web, but I’m no further ahead trying to get my phone to work as a broadband modem, or install my printer driver, or load up my ancient bookkeeping program (which installs on DOS, would you believe, and I can’t even find the command prompt yet!) Not a happy camper right now, wondering if I can scrap Windows 7 and reinstall XP somehow.
But just when one thing seems impossible, something else comes along to add to the challenge. We arrived at Bienville National Forest (I was going on memory at this point, vaguely remembering where camps were from all my prep work. After all, my computer crashed last October and I had to do an entire summer’s worth of the same work over again, so some of it stuck.) I had looked it up again on the website before we headed out, and confirmed that Base Camp I was closed until April, but BC II was open all year, so that’s where we were headed. We stopped in a small town on the way that had wireless signal, and I sat in a gas station convenience store for two hours trying to get this stupid computer going, but the signal was so slow I had to give up, having gained nothing but more frustration, and a greater determination to somehow get XP on this machine.
We arrived at BC II, only to discover a yellow tape across the entrance, in front of a pile of huge limbs, and the camp looked like it had been hit by a tornado (which apparently, it had, but we don’t know when). Trees were down, the gateway was impassable, as was the loop around the campground. It was nearing darking, and we were stuck. What to do, what to do? Well, once again, not to let a few measly challenges get in our way, we noticed a Water Management Deer Checking station right next door, with an open gate and a parking area sufficient for me to turn the big rig around. Being a Saturday, there was no one around, but there was a red pickup parked off to one side. We pulled in and parked, then dicovered a water spigot, and later, an electrical outlet! We made ourselves at home in short order. As we were doing so, the owner of the red pickup arrived, all decked out in hunting gear, having come back from a turkey expedition (empty-handed). He confirmed that he’d never seen the gate locked anyway, he didn’t work there, he just parked there to go hunting, and no one was likely to care that we spent the night there (as if we had a choice at that point, dusk had arrived). We went to bed, relieved that we had once again overcome the obstacles placed before us. Now if I could only get this bloody computer to work!

Packed up and headed straight for the Best Buy. While I’ve always had Toshiba laptops, they didn’t have one that was as small as I wanted (at least, not one with a CD player), so I decided on a compact little Dell. I wanted something that was smaller and lighter, since so much of our travel these days is on airplanes, so the Inspiron 1440 was my choice. Little did I know that Windows would do it to me again. Every computer had Windows 7 on it, once again my operating system of choice and knowledge (XP) was unavailable. After assurances from the sales guy that it was a great system (and I didn’t have much time to decide), we headed out the door and up the road to a new horse camp, Gum Springs Horse Trail in the northern part of Kisatchie National Forest.
We had loved Cane Camp in the south part of the same forest, and this one was pretty good as well, though not quite as nice. I forgot to take a pic, sorry. It was conveniently located right off the highway, although that made it noisy with the traffic. There were water spigots scattered around the camping area, toilets, but there really wasn’t any place that was level for the RV. It did have corrals all around, but most were too muddy to use. A lot of pros and cons, but fine for just staying overnight. Rather than using the corrals, we just highlined the horses nearby to keep their feet dry. I got to work trying to make sense out of my new computer, and the more I tried, the more confused I got. Not happy with the new Windows 7 layout, and there’s no Outlook Express! Going to have to figure out how email is supposed to work with this thing! Went to bed frustrated, which is never good when you’re trying to sleep!

Hit the road fairly early, though we had long goodbyes with Hank, and Mike, a boarder who had just given two of his horses away to a good home (pasture buds that would have been hard to separate, and one really needed a lot of tender loving care, as he had a heart murmur and poor circulation that created a lot of other problems). Our destination was back to Davy Crockett National Forest, with a stop for hay on the way. By the time we got there, the hay I wanted was gone and I had to settle for some not so great bluestem grass from Kansas, pretty long and stalky, but we were stuck. I had rec’d an email during the day from a client in DC who wanted to meet with on next Thursday! Suddenly, our leisurely, almost three weeks to get to Bristol, VA with a brief stop in Nashville for Hubby’s doctor’s appointment had turned into a mad, non-stop dash across country to try to get to DC on time. Then, to make matters worse, my computer well and truly and irretrievably crashed! All of my information about horse camps that I’d acquired on Google Earth, while safely tucked away (I hope) on Carbonite, I had no computer to load it down on. So in addition to having very little time to get where we needed to go (and now, not knowing where all the stops were along the way), I also had to buy a computer somewhere along the road, and somehow get it up and running so that it would be useful again. Anyone who’s ever done that knows what a time consuming process that can be, even with a backup! Well, if nothing else, life is a serious of challenges to be overcome, so we can only do our best to enjoy the problem-solving parts of our lives!
Arrived at Davy Crockett, set up, and proceeded to try to figure out where to go next, without the help of Google Earth. We determined that we would have to travel an average of 250-300 miles a day to get to DC on time, though the distance between horse camps isn’t exactly that regular. We decided to go to Gum Springs Horse Camp, which had been our original plan, but only stay overnight instead of the several days we had hoped for. It was a fairly short hop, but it passed through Lufkin, TX, which had a Best Buy where I could look for a computer. We had little time to lose, so we went to bed early with plans to get up the same.

Headed out to Austin, reunited with our big kids at the Onion Creek Ranch, and got everything ready for our departure tomorrow. Horses are starting to fill out a bit, thanks to the extra portions ranch manager Hank was giving them. I’m sure they’ll be back to their fighting weight in no time!