Archives for January 2011

Day was still chilly and foggy with occasional drizzle, but we confirmed a job in Nashville for next week, and went out in search of a trailer. We started at Texan Trailers here in Tomball, but the only enclosed trailer they had was a HUGE Kiefer Built. Though it was only a two-horse straight load, it was obviously designed for draft horses. I was afraid our horses would get lost in there! A super big tack room, and lots of bells and whistles, but quite a bit over our price range, and just too big for what we needed. Next, we headed 20 miles north to a private seller in Magnolia. Jamie greeted us on her driveway and led us back to her 03 Logan 2 horse slant load. This was a much more manageable size. Though it was extra tall, it was moderately wide, had a big tack room that included a padded bench storage box, 2 hat racks on springs, a shelf, and best of all, a 35-gallon water tank tucked in the corner, an added bonus we hadn’t seen before but that will come in tremendously handy. It has Dexter torsion axles (like on our RV), self-adjusting brakes, pretty good tires, and can be completely closed up if necessary. A couple of drop-down windows add to the features as well. It’s smaller than the huge thing we looked at earlier in the day, but considerably larger than what we have now. In other words, just about perfect for what we need. It’s white, and has a fantastic graphic of a running horse on the side, in a color that will match my truck and the graphics on the RV perfectly,making a perfect set. The final straw was the fact that it’s a 2003, which is the same as the van (which we bought new) and the truck we bought in September in Phoenix. 2003 must have been a great year! We negotiated a price only slightly above my price range : – ), and shook hands on the deal. Jamie needs to clean it out, and to keep it to take her mare to Texas A&M for some vet treatment for a few days, then return her next Monday, which will work out just fine for us, as we have to fly to Nashville Sunday, returning Monday. Then we can pick up the trailer next Tuesday and get everything moved over. Meanwhile, David (our hostess’ son) is pretty sure he can find a buyer for our old trailer fairly quickly. I’m sure if I put an ad on craigslist I can probably sell it before the week is out in any event. Jamie only just listed hers on Friday, and several of the ads I answered said they’d been sold already, so trailers are apparently in great demand right now. Very happy we solved our problem at last! Stopped at Wal-mart on the way home for some groceries, arrived back to discover our mail STILL hadn’t caught up to us (it missed us at Corpus, taking 7 days to arrive even though it was priority mail), and then they forwarded it priority last Thursday. I’m having a hard time understanding why it would take more than four days to travel 100 miles, but there you go. Spent the evening watching a pointless alien slasher movie with Dennis Quaid, trying to keep warm, but happy we’re missing the foot of snow they’re having at home!

A chilly rainy day, perfect for watching football and movies, which is about all we did today. Still looking online for a trailer, several possibilities that we’ll check out tomorrow.

Spent the morning looking for more trailers online, then spent a few delightful hours in the afternoon with our hostess as she prepares to head to Austin for the new assembly session. Otherwise a relaxing day.

Everybody had a busy day today, our friends at work and us doing laundry, observing David work with a mare in preparation of breeding her, and searching for a horse trailer. We want to upgrade to something with a full dressing room or tack area for more storage, and possibly even to a 3-horse trailer if we can find the right one. No hurry, our little blue 2-horse works fine, we would just like to reclaim the back seat of my new truck as a seat and not a saddle storage area. Found a couple of possibilities, and actually drove south about 90 minutes to a place that had one for sale, but it wasn’t exactly what we were looking for. So many of the trailers in this area are actually stock or combo trailers, but we really want something that can be fully enclosed for those inevitable days that are either cold, or dusty. We’d really like to avoid arriving somewhere with our horses covered in dust just because we came down a few miles of dirt road, which is typical when we stay in National Forests or Wildernesses, and we think a fully enclosed trailer might to the trick. But owner Pammie was very nice anyway, it was delightful to meet and speak with her, I’m sure she won’t have any trouble selling the trailer, it was nice and would be fine for short trips, but we really need something with a bit more padding and more closed in. Onward ho!

Despite intentions to get up early, we ended up laying in bed for more than half an hour. Part of the reason for that was that the horses were extremely agitated for most of the night, snorting and pacing and making a general fuss, very uncharacteristic of them. Finally at about 2:15 am I got up, threw on a bathrobe, grabbed the flashlight and went out trying to find the cause. After several minutes of squinting in the direction the horses were intently looking, I finally saw the problem, a HUGE wild boar digging around in the yard about 50 yards away. It had to be 5 feet long, 3+ feet high and it’s stomach just about hit the ground. It was busy digging, so I grabbed my billy club and headed in it’s direction, making noise and yelling, banging on a picnic table as I went. It didn’t seem to notice. Finally I picked up a stone and threw it at it (from a respectful distance, of course), and it landed near enough to make it start to move off. I found another stone and threw it, this time I think I hit it because it skedaddled off into the woods. I came back and found the horses intrigued by my rescue, and quieter, but still looking off in the direction the boar went. I went to bed, happier now that the horses had settled down, but wide awake having trampled about in the cold night. Finally fell off to sleep, but the need for a few more zzz’s kept us in bed longer than we had planned, but it’s a fairly short trip today, so no worries. Finally got going, I headed back down to the park to dump while Hubby waited for me at the end of Sawgrass Road. Eventually headed north, first stop was fuel, second stop was Lowes on Katy Freeway to pick up a new door for my laundry room, which I had ordered more than a month ago in anticipation of traveling through Houston at some point, and finally arrived at our friend’s house in Tomball. Her son David met us and helped us get the horses settled in and the RV hooked up. A few hours later, our friend arrived home, and soon we were off to a meeting in her district to meet with some of her constituents, and spent a lovely evening making new friends.

We all had a restless night, with us worrying about the horses and listening to Clio snort like a dragon, while the horses fretted most of the night as well, despite the fact it was very dark and very quiet out here, a welcome change from the many stables where we’ve been staying lately. Hubby managed to get the satellite dish up and running after breakfast, while I spent the day closing out the books for last year and trying to learn to use my new Quicken bookkeeping program. I’ve been using the same MoneyCounts program since 1993 (it wasn’t even Y2K compatible, would you believe!), but it won’t work on my newest computer so I’ve finally had to acquiesce and upgrade. It seems like it will be easier, as it automatically downloads most of my bank and credit card information directly, which should save me a ton of time now that I won’t have to manually input everything, which is what I’ve had to do up to now. Hubby took a nap in the afternoon after his rough night. Meanwhile, I let the dogs out to run around for a few minutes, and would you believe, at that moment a couple rode by on bicycles. Naturally, the dogs ran after them to say hello, and one of them waved, so we didn’t think any more about it, but about an hour later, we had a ranger visit us, telling us that “loose dogs” had been reported, and that they had “chased” the bikers. He said we needed to leash the dogs. The more I thought about it, the more angry I became. Whatever happened to tolerance? Why is my freedom to let my dogs have a few minutes of running around a day less important than those bikers freedoms? They weren’t threatened in any way, so what was the big deal? Freedom and tolerance must go hand in hand. If we all relish our freedom, we must realize that what others do with THEIR freedom isn’t for us to determine, or criticize, or be intolerant of. All that political correctness has done is to make us more intolerant, and frankly, I’m getting very annoyed by it. Anyway, enough of my rant, I just hate it when people can’t make even the slightest effort to get along, even when it costs them nothing. Spent the evening relaxing, walking the perimeter when the horses got excited again, and leaving the scare light on again. They were quieter for the most part, but still became agitated on occasion, but nowhere near as bad as last night, for which we were grateful.

After leaving a donation check with the PeeWee Animal Adoption Center where we stayed for the weekend, we headed out, stopping at IHOP for breakfast while we waited for the Post Office to sort through their mail. I was sure by now our priority package would arrive no later than today, since it was sent last Tuesday, but unfortunately, once again, it still hadn’t arrived. Now we were running late, not getting out of Corpus Christi until nearly after 10:30, but we made good time to Markham, where Windmill Farms had good Jiggs Bermuda hay for sale. Arrived about 1:15, loaded up with 21 very nice bales at quite a good price, then headed out to Brazos Bend State Park, just southwest of Houston. After we arrived, checked in, and filled up with water (the horse camp only has stock water in a trough), we headed out the long gravel road to the horse camp, which was behind a locked gate. No one else was here, and it didn’t look like anyone had been here for quite some time, confirming my belief that the prices are too high. If this was run by a private company, they’d have to lower the price until people started showing up, add amenities like potable water and electric, then work the prices back up again, giving value for money. Otherwise, they need to just lower the price to reflect the lack of amenities, which, of course, as long as they’re subsidized by our tax dollars, isn’t likely to happen. The campground itself is lovely, though, with great big trees and a nice gravel loop, and Hubby had no trouble finding a nice pull-through big enough for both vehicles and a possible satellite signal. Strung up our highline and got the horses settled in, and we were soon enjoying a relaxing evening after our busy day. Later on in the evening, we noticed the horses were very skittish for some reason, we figured there must be critters in the woods nearby, so Hubby took a walk with the dogs around the perimeter of the campground, and we left the “scare” light on the RV switched on when we went to bed, in hopes that would keep away those critters for the most part. They were still restless when we went to bed, but a check on the internet seemed to indicate there were no real carnivorous wild animals in this area, so we left them to their own resources, figuring they would let us know if there was any real trouble brewing.

While Hubby did a few chores in the morning while I worked on the computer, he rested in the afternoon while I washed the new truck. Otherwise an uneventful, semi-restful day.

The day started out colder, with a brisk northeast wind bringing a chill, but after a while, the sun started to warm things up quite nicely. We got the horses in the trailer and headed out to the North Beach Access of the Padre Island National Seashore. We parked by the side of the road, unloaded and saddled the horses in a matter of minutes, and headed south into the No Vehicle area, which was quite warm going with the wind. The beach had widened up again, with the wind blowing against the tide, which was coming in again. Much of the older seaweed had been buried by a new layer of sand, while a fresh swath of seaweed had accumulated at the new tide line. We walked on the beach first, then eventually moved the horses to the water line so that once again, they had their feet in a body of water that makes up a border of America. Now we just have to finish it off in the Great Lakes, which is the plan for this summer! Rode about 4 miles down to the Malaquite Campground, where we borrowed a pan from a woman coming out of the shower to water the horses before heading back north again. By now, the wind had decreased somewhat, so the northbound journey was a bit cooler, but not as bad as we thought it might be. Overall, it was a lovely ride, but honestly, beaches do get a bit boring rather quickly, with little scenery except the variety of junk on the beach. The only thing that keeps it interesting is working with Apollo, getting him to be less reactive to the waves (he always starts out convinced they’re going to swallow him up, so he stops or side steps whenever they come near), but eventually he relaxed enough to walk in a straight line, and we even got a bunch of trots and a few brief canters in the water’s edge, with water up to his fetlocks at least. In a little less than four hours, we were back at the trailer. On the way home we stopped at a Lowes to pick up two new door handles (the one on the bathroom and closet doors have worn out), and arrived back just in time to get the horses settled in and fed before the sun set. Relaxed the rest of the evening, satisfied with a very nice ride and reaching another landmark in our journey!