Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019 – Ride Day on Flash

Well, after a rather confusing start on my last trail ride, which I managed to decipher a bit once I downloaded it and overlaid it on Google Earth, I realized I had covered much of the southern side of the park, so today I decided to do the eastern and northern parts of the park as much as possible. Saddled up Flash and headed out on the trailhead at the north end of the park, which took me toward the day parking area. From there I went down what the map called the Lazy Creek Crossing Trail, and showed as a loop, but once I got to what I guess what the Lazy Creek, the trail entered Snyder Hollow and disappeared. Some trees were down, but it still didn't look like there was any trail beyond that, so we turned around and circled around until I finally ran out of places to go, so I headed back to Possum Ridge where it runs along the south side of the park road and took that due west, hoping to find the part of Lake View trail that went out into the farthest west peninsula. Unfortunately, that eluded me again, but I did find where it crossed the road to the northern side of the park. On the map it shows several different trails of various names, but the only obvious trail I found had "Big Beech Trail" signs all along it. Near as I could figure once I got home and download our route was the Big Beech is known as Piney Woods on the map. Go figure. There have been so many times where the map and what's on the ground aren't very close, and this was a classic example. So not only is the map hand-drawn and inaccurate as to where the trails are, the names have been changed in many cases. Oh, well, it was a pretty nice trail, a bit in need of maintenance but overall not bad, single track through most of it. It eventually wound around back to the same trailhead where I started, completing another 8.5+ mile ride on Flash. Did some chores and other various and sundry things before settling down for the evening. Another great day on the road.

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!

Friday, Oct. 11, 2019 – First Ride at Taylorsville on Flash

Feeling much more rested today, so I decided to take Flash out and explore the trails. The map shows quite a few loops, including a nice perimeter around the park, so I planned on doing that. Unfortunately, it seems the map is hand-drawn, because I can't get it to line up properly on Google Earth as an overlay, so I'm only guessing as to how long the trails are and where they go. It's not a huge park, though, and there's a main road running through the middle of it, so getting lost will be hard to do. Got him saddled up, then headed south out of the camp through the woods and across a couple of roads to the main Possum Ridge trail. This is what I call a "trail by bulldozer" type trail, but eventually I took a single track trail that led me to a much nicer trail called Lake View. There are some good markings at the intersections, which helps a lot. I turn another turn out to Lake Vista trail, which was a bit more challenging and not as well maintained, but did take us right down to the lake, even crossing the edge of it a time or two. Then I got a bit confused by the sign that said Loop 2, which wasn't indicated on the map, unless it was another name for Horseshoe Loop. That was the least maintained trail I had been on yet, still passable, but a bit more challenging. That brought me back to Lake View, but it didn't seem to go in the direction the map indicated, so I got turned around a bit. By then we had been gone longer than I anticipated, so rather than complete the perimeter, I tried to find a shorter way back to camp, and the map was of little assistance there. I had wanted to loop around and come back to camp on the north trailhead, but couldn't find the right trail to take, so I ended up on Possum Ridge again, and came in from the south where I had left. Still, a nice ride, and I let Flash make most of the decisions, so he was more engaged than ever. He's really starting to come along, learning the follow the trail and pick his own footing, something he never used to do. Much improved! Got back to camp, had a quick lunch, then headed up to Shelbyville (KY) to do some shopping at Tractor Supply (darn it, forgot to bring my propane tanks!) and Walmart. SO GLAD we're back in Blue Bell Ice Cream territory again!! It's that time of year for my favorite limited edition ice cream of all time, Blue Bell's Spiced Pumpkin Pecan! If you haven't tried it, you MUST!! It's the best!! Got back to camp by 4:00 or so, and it was getting crowded again with the usual Friday night crowd coming in, but then, there's also a rain storm and a cold front making it's way in overnight, too, so likely to be much cooler tomorrow!

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!

Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2019 – Travel Day to Taylorsville State Park in Kentucky

Set the alarm for bright and early (though it was still dark outside!), thought we'd be able to get out earlier than usual since I did so much packing yesterday and there wasn't too much to do, but of course, that was too much to hope for. For some reason, our batteries suddenly behaved as if they weren't connected, and we had no power to the jacks on the trailer, so we couldn't raise it to hook it up to the truck. It took some time, but we finally resolved the issue, there's some sort of individual circuit breaker in the battery compartment, and once I switched that off and on, it worked. No idea why or how or when that happened, everything was working fine last night. So much for getting out early! By the time we got finished at the dump, it was just after 10:00, which was my drop-dead time for getting out, so we just barely made it, but later than I had hoped when I got up this morning! It was an uneventful trip, thank goodness, and we found the perfect fuel stop in northern Kentucky, a Pilot on the east side (the one on the west side had NO room for us!) where we had room to pull in the car pumps, plus they had a Subway so Hubby managed to get us a sandwich while I fueled up the truck. From there it was a quick trip to Taylorsville State Park, a lot of back roads but nothing we couldn't handle, arriving just after 4:00, right on schedule. We checked in with no problem and went out to the horse camp, and found a fairly mundane campsite, at least compared to the fabulous site we had at Pleasant Hill, where we definitely got spoiled! Here all the sites are side by side, and they had hitching rails rather than highlines, which frankly, I hate, so I had to reconnoiter a bit to find a place where I could put up my highline around the edge of the trees in front of the one of the hitching posts, but managed to find one. It's a bit of a walk, but not much further than at Pleasant Hill. One advantage here, of course, we have electric and water right on the site, though getting water out to the horses will take some doing. I hope I have enough hose to reach them! I just hope the trails will be good here, because there's nothing really special about the camp. Lots of kids here, seems like a real family place, and there are quite a few non-horse people here, not sure what that's about. Anyway, very tired after our long drive, didn't even bother to unhook the truck or put the screen room up, just did the basics before getting the horses settled, and us as well!

Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2019 – Prep Day

Had a very busy and tiring day packing up and putting away everything that we had used during this last fabulous month at Pleasant Hill Lake. The most challenging was getting enough air out of my kayak to fit it back into the bag, but we managed it! Hubby helped me put some stuff up top in the attic, and I managed to get just about everything away, including closing up the awning so I had nothing except horse stuff to do in the morning. Unfortunately we couldn't hook up to the truck since the site isn't level enough, but that shouldn't take too long. It's a long drive to our next camp, so I'm hoping to get out of here asap in the morning!

Monday, Oct. 7, 2019 – Hay Pickup, Trailer Return and Shopping

First job on the agenda today was pickup some hay. Thanks to Facebook market place, I found some good second cutting right in Perrysville, on the way to Mike's place to return his trailer. A nice big farm with a lot of stuff going on, sold me enough to get me through next week, when I'll have to find some in Kentucky. Found Mike's place with not problem and off-loaded his trailer, then he offered to show us a good breakfast spot, and we left following him to an place called the Old Mill, in Ashland, right inside a big grocery store, which was great as I needed some produce and some nectar, both of which are better from a grocery store than at Walmart. We had a nice meal, then headed out to do the rest of our shopping before heading back to camp, where I spent a little time doing some preliminary packing for our departure on Wednesday, and watching a beautiful sunset!

Sunday, Oct. 6, 2019 – Repair and Visit Day

Slept late after going to be so late last night, but when I got up I decided to do a quick repair on the toilet. I had repaired the bottom seal a while back, but had developed a little leak because I didn’t put in any teflon tape, so I decided to go ahead and do that two minute job this morning. That went fine, but at one point I needed to move the bathroom sliding door, and unfortunately, when I did that from the bottom, I accidentally knocked it off it’s tracks. Of course, it’s not a simple track type like in a house, where you can just slip it back on the track, oh no, this has to be a very difficult to align top track, where a slide on the top of the door has to be pushed into a hanging nut on a bolt, then a plastic lock has to be turned 180 degrees to lock it in (though I suspect the reason it came off so easily was because the lock was never properly engaged.) I tried to work on it for a bit, but had no luck at all, as it’s one of those 2 or 3-person jobs. As it turned out, some nice neighbors, Erin and Steve came over to visit for a while, and when they learned of my problem they generously offered to help. Thank goodness I accepted! I’m not good at asking for help, but frankly, I would never have been able to do that job on my own, and we’d have been left with a permanently open bathroom door, NO THANK YOU!! Anyway, the three of us fussed with it for over an hour, but we finally managed to get it fixed and LOCKED! End of problem! Thanks so much, guys!! I had hoped to get a quick ride in today, but with all the time spent on that job, it got too late to go. Eventually the campground emptied out except for two sets of folks who are staying an extra night. Unfortunately, the one nearest to us runs their generator all night, so it’s going to be another earplug night!