Archives for 2011

Spent the day working on the computer expanding my Google Earth listing of horse camps, while it rained for a good part of the day. Hubby read and watched TV, then took a short trip into town to pick up a few things before we settled in for the evening.

 THESE are the kinds of rides we live for! After sleeping WAY too late (if there can be such a thing when there’s no appointments pending :-), we finally managed to get out on the trail about 12:30. And what a trail it was! We started on the red trail, where the footing was sand and dirt often covered by leaves, and it meandered through a variety of terrain (though all flat), with some areas filled with squash palms and others with large old growth trees that were perfectly stunning. The trail took us close to the Santa Fe River, which apparently is mostly an above ground river that suddenly turns subterranean where Oleno State Park is, the “rises” to the surface again, thus explaining the name of our wildlife area. From the read trail we looped back on part of the yellow trail, which extends a very long way on the other side of 441, which is a very busy road so we decided not to cross it today, but might do over the weekend, then meandered through some of the green trail, which were mostly sandy roads, which were perfect for long trots, canters, and we even got a few gallops in, would you believe! It was fantastic! Both us and the horses were very relaxed, even at the gallops (which I think they’re starting to really enjoy knowing we’re getting so comfortable with them). We couldn’t have asked for a more perfect ride! We were out just under three hours, and all of us thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Although we had originally planned on moving south on Friday, it looks like we’re going to stay for the weekend so we can get that 15-mile yellow trail done on Saturday. A perfect day!



Just a few of many deer we saw on the trail



Well, though it didn’t rain, it stayed cloudy all day, and was colder than we thought it would be, but at least we’re moving further south! An uneventful drive to Oleno State Park where we picked up our credentials for River Rise, followed their driving instructions (which put the horse camp in a place WAY outside where Google Earth says the boundaries are for River Rise!), went through the locked gate to find quite a substantive barn and an area filled with gorgeous live oaks, picnic tables and fire rings scattered about. We filled up the water tank from the washrack, picked a spot next to the barn and were settled in in not time. The trails looked quite inviting, and there’s an extensive trail network here, so we’re very much looking forward to our ride tomorrow!

Well, the forecasters were right today, despite having clear skies when we went to bed, it rained most of the night later on, and well into the morning. It quit about noon, but the train of rain was between us and our next destination, so we decided to stay one more day. Used it to do housekeeping, laundry, reading, and keep searching for new horse camps, as I have a very good broadband signal here, though I’m getting close to maxxing out my monthly limit, so I may have to spring for another megabyte. Either that or give it a rest for awhile, and that’s hard to do! Hopefully the forecasters will be right and tomorrow will be sunny!

Slept late since there wasn’t any real reason to get up, and in bed was the warmest place in the house. Really lazy day today, since we couldn’t ride or do anything outside. Watched movies and news, that was about it today. Hubby’s eye is better now, nothing to stop us from moving on tomorrow!

Cold and wet all day, woke up to a layer of ice covering the tarp over the hay, the generator, and everything else out in the open. Got the horses out of the trailer where they had spent the night. Hubby spent most of it watching TV and I worked on finding more horse camps in the south and east, which I had done before but got lost when my computer crashed and I didn’t realize that Carbonite wasn’t saving my Google Earth My Places (which I now move to a file that I know will be backed up regularly). Mostly found places in Florida, which, judging by the unusually cold weather, is going to be where we stay for the next 6-8 weeks. Put the horses in the trailer again for the night, as the forecast was for 100% chance of rain and lows near freezing. Sure wish we’d made it to Florida before now, not looking forward to yet another day of cold wet weather, but we’ll just have to hunker down and suffer through it! At least we’re not having 60 inches of snow, which seems to be the norm for everyone north of the Mason-Dixon!

Cold and cloudy today. Forecast keeps changing, first for the better, then for the worse. Hubby’s eye isn’t really well enough to drive unless we were really pressed, and since we’re not, we decided to stay. Unfortunately, the temps keep dropping and the cold rain keeps falling. Ran into nearby Wiggins to drop off mail, get gas for the van and the generator, and enough groceries to last us until Saturday, when the weather, theoretically, will be warmer and sunny and we’ll be moving on to north Florida. Put the horses in the trailer for the night, since the forecast now is for freezing rain overnight, with lows in the 20’s. Once again, “unusual” for this part of the country. I’m beginning to get paranoid, that the cold weather is intentionally following us. Looking for a horse camp in the Florida Keys, if anybody knows of one!

Had a good night’s sleep after taking some ibuprofen before going to bed (Hubby took Tylenol). Spent the day working on my bookkeeping, finishing off last year’s books and moving everything to a new bookkeeping program, and preparing to do the taxes. I’m waiting for a few more weeks before having mail forwarded, to make sure we have all the tax info. I suspect that some will be late because of the tardiness of the extension of the Bush tax rates in December. I trust they won’t mind if I send in my taxes late, too (yeah, right!). It was warm, and rained most of the day, so it was the perfect day for office work. Hubby watched the news most of the day (the Egyptian uprising), then took a nap in the afternoon. On the ride yesterday, a branch swung and hit him in the face, and making a small cut on his eye, which is small but painful, so I bandaged up his eye to keep him from rubbing it and making it worse. Although we had originally planned to leave tomorrow, there’s a cold front coming our way (one of the worst storm’s of the century, according to most news reports), so there’s only a few degrees difference between where we are and where we’re going. Since here we are paying zero to camp, and will have to pay $20/night at the next place, we’d rather not do that when the weather is cold and rainy and we won’t be able to ride anyway. The added incentive of Hubby suffering, and possibly not even able to drive if his eye doesn’t get well enough, we’ve decided to stay here, even though it’s going to be getting really cold in the next few days. We can always throw the horses into the trailer if it gets too cold. With that decided, we went to bed snuggling, using body heat to fend off the cold (whoo-hoo!).