Set the alarm for an early start, and it was still pretty dark out when I got up, what with overcast skies and being on the western edge of the eastern time zone. Made good time finishing the packing, and managed to pull away from the campsite and subsequently the RV dump before 9:00. We had an uneventful drive with just one stop at a truck stop for fuel, and had almost decided to stop for lunch since we were early, when we were hit with a downpour of rain (so much for the forecast, again!) and decided the best course of action was to get there as soon as possible, since we didn’t know what kind of condition the area we were parking would be in, and we didn’t want to have to worry about getting stuck in mud. As it was, we arrived right around noon, were welcome by our hostess Rosie, who showed us around and helped us get moved in. We managed to park before the rain hit, but it burst down on us just as we were ready to get the horses out. We paused for a few minutes to let it pass, then got the horses out and put them in the pasture and got settled in. Then we ran out for a meal at a Mexican restaurant in Shelbyville (TN), the nearest large town (and home to the Tennessee Walking Horse Celebration), before coming back, doing chores and settling down for the evening. It rained most of the afternoon and evening, but it was still pretty warm, so I didn’t bother blanketing the horses, something I’ve been doing as needed for the past week, because I’m trying to prevent the horses from growing too much winter coat. They won’t need all that hair once we get to Florida! It looks like it may get colder tomorrow, so blankets, or bringing them into the barn will become necessary. We’ll see how it goes!
Archives for October 2019
Sunday, Oct. 20, 2019 – Prep for Departure
With plans to leave tomorrow, I spent most of the day putting stuff away, in between dialyzing Hubby, as we want to get an early start tomorrow. There’s some rain coming in, and even though I don’t have a load of hay in the back, I’d rather limit the amount of time in the rain as much as possible, and it seems an early start and arrival will help with that. According to the forecast (yeah, right), it’s not supposed to start raining in Wartrace, TN (our destination) until 4:00, and not supposed to start raining until about 10:00 here, so fingers crossed, we’ll be able to stay ahead of it. Kept a nice steady pace so as not to wear myself out, and managed to get everything done by the time we finished dialysis, and settled down for the evening.
Friday, Oct. 18, 2019 – Shopping
After a couple of days of just hanging around, getting caught up on my computer work and writing and dialyzing, of course, we finally reached the point where we needed to do some shopping, so we headed out again to Shelbyville (KY), this time remembering to take my propane tanks. Several stops, including one to get some plumbing items for a leaking water hose, took up most of the afternoon, then trying to do the necessary repair took a bit more time, so the day was shot. Naturally by the time we got back to camp it had filled up with folks, including several more that didn’t have horses. I guess the management here isn’t as picky about renting these spaces to horse people, they go to overflow from the main campground if there are any spaces left, they don’t save them for horse folks. Sigh… With only 12 sites, that’s really a bummer, and there were many of the horse sites that ganged together with larger families and friends, so there were lots of vehicles crowded in each site. Guess I can’t blame the park for not wanting to pack ’em in on a holiday weekend! They had special Halloween stuff going on, and there was a lot of traffic driving through all evening, and lots of people had their sites decorated with Halloween paraphernalia, I figure there must be some kind of contest going on or something. Anyway, we settled down for the evening, tired from the day of activity!
Monday, Oct. 14, 2019 – Late Sleeping Dialysis Day
Couldn’t believe I slept until after 10:00 this morning!! Guess I was more tired than I realized! I had hoped to take a short ride on Apollo, though I was hoping more that Hubby would feel well enough to ride today, but he slept until after 11:00! Guess we should be getting to bed earlier! I finished off the downloading of my pix from my website back on to my computer, then pretty much just dialyzed and watched movies the rest of the day. Guess I needed a rest day!
Sunday, Oct. 13, 2019 – Another (sort of) Rest Day
Hubby had a bad night, spent most of it in his recliner in the living room, and for some reason (maybe the weather? Or just simpatico with my honey) I felt really tired today, too. It might have had a little to do with the fact that I spent several hours working on a leak in the toilet water line, and it got so bad I had to jury-rig a whole new connection using a bit of garden hose and some clamps until I can get the parts I need. Whew! By then it was too late to ride, even if I wanted to in this cooler weather (yes, I’m a fair weather rider!!), so we decided to spend the rest of the day between finishing my downloading and watching movies. It is Sunday, after all, and a holiday weekend, so a complete day off (other than horse chores, of course), was most welcome!
Saturday, Oct. 12, 2019 – Rainy Rest Day
As promised, a cold front came in last night, with lots of wind and a huge drop in temperature, not surprising for this time of year, just hope it doesn’t last! Bright sunshine by the time I got up, though, but it was down in the upper 30’s, so brisk to say the least! Got my chores done, then spent the bulk of the day still downloading the pix and diary entries back to my computer after it’s recent crash. Of course, today was dialysis day as well, so that pretty well covers it! Glad we have electric, so we’ve been running the electric fireplace for heat, and it’s SO COZY!! A perfectly nice way to spend a cold day!
Thursday, Oct. 10, 2019 – Recovery Day
After such a long day yesterday, we did a bare minimum today. Disconnected the truck, got out the lawn chairs, did my regular chores and doing dialysis was about all the energy I had today. We drove nearly twice as far as we usually do since we started this trip in June, so we’ve been a bit spoiled with short drive days, until today. But it was worth it to spend a full month at Pleasant Hill Horse Camp, that was truly a magical place! So much so that this place seemed so subpar when we first got here, I actually spent some time looking for alternatives yesterday, but after a good night’s sleep, we realized this place is pretty typical of horse camps, so we settled back into our original plan, which is to stay until a week from Monday before heading down to a stable in Tennessee where we will stay until we get whatever business, house and medical stuff we need to do done. That includes one side business trip out to California, which is why we’re staying at a stable instead of a horse camp. Enough said, I’m relaxing today!