Archives for November 2015

We started the day at a Waffle House, which, believe it or not, my brother said he’d never been to! This was a great contrast, as we had a quick breakfast and were back on the road in no time. It was a shorter drive today, only going as far as the Osceola National Forest, where we arrived at the West Tower camp area by early afternoon. They have done some nice improvements, adding runs to the wooden stalls, so the horses had some room to roam. We got them settled in and got everything set up. My brother, who didn’t get a good night sleep because the mattress lost air during the night, decided he wanted me to drive him into Jacksonville tonight instead of tomorrow morning. He had a train to catch in the morning, and the plan had been to get him there in the morning, but having not slept well, he decided he wanted to get to a hotel room. I drove him in, we had a nice steak dinner, before I headed back in the dark, after picking up Chinese takeout for Hubby. I managed to get back just after 7:30, and settled down for the evening, tired and ready for some peace and quiet.

After weeks of work around the house, side work trips in Augusta, GA, a visit from one of my brothers, lots of preparation, two months of no riding, and a rain delay, we all finally left home in Tennessee to head south for the winter. In the nick of time, too, we had already been having fires in the fireplace! It was a beautiful, sunny day after a long day of hard rain yesterday, and though we got up at the crack of dawn, it was nearly 9:30 by the time we were able to get everything finally packed up and out. With my brother riding shotgun with me in the truck, we had a relatively uneventful trip to Umadilla, GA, where we took an overnight stop at the very conveniently located Southeastern Arena We stopped for dinner at a truck stop just beforehand, and unfortunately, the service was so slow we ended up losing an hour, and combined with the hour we lost moving from Central to Eastern time, we ended up fighting the sunset in order to get the satellite dish up, a challenge as this was the first time Hubby had the chance to set up this particular dish, as we had changed it out during our stay at home, but he managed to finish before full dark. After a quiet evening of TV, we inflated an air mattress for my brother before heading to bed.