Every year, our local Boy Scout Camp has hosted the Southeast Endurance Riders Association Ride, and for the first time in a long time, we were home and had time to help, so I wrote to the organizers, headed up by Ike, to volunteer to help in any way I could. Hubby has been busy putting down some new tile in the house, so I went on my own, and spent the afternoon helping out with registering the riders as they came in for the weekend. I stayed through the volunteer dinner, and attended the ride meeting at the dining hall and learned quite a bit about how the whole endurance race community works. Hubby managed to feed himself and I got home about 8:30, tired from the day, but happy to be of help!

Having decided that we were likely to stay home this summer, Hubby and I made a few comfort decisions, to buy a new theatre-style reclining love seat, and last week getting a new 60″ Sony HDTV. Can’t believe how prices have dropped, the last 60-inch we bought was a projection TV in the early 90’s for $3000, this new one was barely $700, and of course, the quality is unbelievable. Two guys came to deliver the couch, and I had arranged for them to take the old TV away (thank goodness the furniture store owner agreed!), it had quit working last Spring, and we had been bringing the TV from the RV in to the house in meantime, during our short stays at home. So now we had a pretty good setup, with our new TV and our new couch. Fortunately, there’s so much work to be done on the house and property, it will keep us busy and not sitting around all day! But it will let us relax in the evenings, as is our habit.

A whopping gully-washer of a rain storm hit early this morning, and even though it started clearing up by late morning, most folks had already decided to head home, and we decided to do the same. Packed up and were heading home about noon, with a quick stop at Walmart to pick up a few things, got home by mid-afternoon, and settled back down for a relaxing evening.

After weeks of being home, doing doctors’ appointments, cleaning house, and generally performing the mundane duties of ordinary life, we finally packed up the RV to take a weekend trip to nearby Circle E Guest Ranch near Winchester, TN. Though it’s only about 40 miles or so away from where we live, and are on the same plateau (Cumberland) that we are, we had never been here before, though we took a short drive up here last Friday after meeting some friends in Monteagle (and after an appearance on a local TV show), just to check it out. We had read somewhere that the road here was twisty and windy, but compared to what Hubby and I are used to, it was easy. Yes, a fairly steep climb, but a two-lane state highway with a full extra shoulder all paved, so no problem. We headed out by 10:30, and arrived in little more than an hour. We checked in at the office, which took an extraordinarily long time, as every time the woman tried to put in my information, it was deleted or it wouldn’t take my payment. It took four tries before she finally had to jury-rig it in order to make it work. They didn’t even have a record of my deposit, which I had made weeks ago! Finally, we moved across the street to the secondary campground (for which we were grateful, to stay away from the madding crowd), and backing in was a challenge because the sites are at a 90 degree angle, and there were a number of trees in the way, but with Hubby’s excellent guidance we managed to get in with only a few angle changes. Once we got in the site, we went back to put the horses in their assigned stalls, only to discover that someone was already in both of them! I don’t understand how people can be so rude, simply taking stalls without checking in first, but there we were, wondering what to do next! I was tempted to just move them out to some other empty stall, but I don’t really like to handle other people’s horses, nor matter how rude and inconsiderate they might be, and when I called the office, they had not clue (surprise, surprise) whose horses they might be, and we ended up having to put ours in a single large stall on the back side of the outside of the barn, instead of inside in two stalls. Whatever, I guess having the two of them together is probably better anyway, but, seriously, having to be forced to make lemonade out of the lemons we were handed is only an indication of our character, not theirs. Anyway, we got them settled in, then went back to the RV and finished setting that up, before heading back over to the dining hall to see where our vendor spot was. Turned out we could have a place on the porch, which meant we didn’t need to set up our little gazebo tent, which was just as well because the forecast called for a lot of rain this weekend (naturally, we haven’t had a drop since we got home, now it’s a 50-70% chance!), and I was a bit afraid the wind from any storms would blow it away. We got set up, and hung around for a while before heading back to camp to put up the satellite dish and settle in for the night. Got caught in a real downpour, unfortunately, but once that ended, we had some pretty skies as the evening wore on. Looking forward to checking out the trails tomorrow!

After breakfast, Hubby stripped out all the broken pipes and headed out to find replacements, while I got busy cleaning and airing out the house. By end of day, we had running water, the house was mostly cleaned up, TV was moved and hooked up, the water bed was warm enough, with a sleeping back under the clean sheets, so we officially moved back into the house. A couple of major problems we need to solve during our stay here, hoping the Honey Do list doesn’t get too long while we’re here!

Got up early, finished packing up, ran out to the rv dump at the regular campground, and was out of the campground before 9:00. Stopped to pick up breakfast, stopped once for fuel just before arriving home, had to combat some kind of running race that followed about 10 miles of our route up Hwy. 41 up the mountain, which slowed us down, but still made it home, with the time change, by about 2:30. Discovered we had no electricity, and the water pipes in the well house were split, so we had our work cut out for us. The electric company managed to arrive in short order, and he found a fuse that had broken, so we were up and running before 4:30. Too late to get the water going, but Hubby, having an astute premonition, had put water in the RV fresh water tank before leaving, something we rarely do as it adds weight to the vehicle, but we learned long ago to listen to that little voice in the back of our heads, it’s hardly ever wrong, so we were fine for the night. Hadn’t planned on moving in today anyway, always need to heat up the water bed for 24 hours before we can sleep on it, so we always stay in the RV the first night home anyway. Put the portable fence up so the horses could graze the overgrown grass (our landscape guy retired, so we need to find another one), did a little cleaning, but couldn’t do much until we get running water, which should be tomorrow.

After spending the morning putting things away in anticipation of our departure tomorrow, the afternoon working with a client in Augusta, a quick trip to Tractor Supply and Walmart to pick up everything we’re going to need for a while after we get home tomorrow, we once again settled down for the evening.