FINALLY got confirmation that my new laptop has arrived, hopefully the end of a 7 week saga of Murphy’s Law, so after breakfast, and putting up the electric corral to give the horses a bit more space and freedom, I left Doe Lake and headed into Ocala, where I had asked for the laptop to be delivered to the UPS Customer Center. I also made stops at Radio Shack for some new coax cable ends Hubby wanted, the liquor store to stock up, and Walmart for all the rest of the usual stuff we forgot last time we shopped, before heading back to camp. Arrived just in time to feed the horses and settle down for the evening.

More rain, more rest, more reading and TV.

Rain came in during the day, and that was fine with us, we both wanted nothing more than to rest today! Movies and recorded episodes of TV series was the order of the day, and early to bed is the plan!

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.

Got up early as we always do on a travel day, fortunately it wasn’t raining at that moment, but we had a lot of rain overnight, so everything was soggy. We had moved the horse trailer from down the hill to as close to the road as we could, but it turned out still not to be enough. When we hooked up the van and started pulling, we quickly started spinning in the mud. I grabbed a shovel and started moving some gravel from the road under the rear tires of the van, and after several attempts, finally made it out of the hole, without doing too much damage, and which I quickly repaired. We managed to get out pretty quickly after that. Fortunately, I only had two bales of hay left in the back of the truck, which we put inside a couple of large trash bags, so when we ran into rain later they stayed dry. By the time we got home, the skies had cleared up a bit, apparently the rain was fairly isolated to the Southern KY area, right where we were camping. It was downright dry by the time we got home. We got the electric fence up and got the horses settled in, did some unpacking, then settled down for the rest of the day. We’ll be home until at least the second week of November, doing mundane house and yardwork, doctors appointments, etc., so I will be suspending the blog until we get back on the road. Enjoy your Fall!

Woke up early, and after feeding the horses, I decided to run up to the dump again to do some work while Hubby got breakfast started. I checked the forecast, and unfortunately, the rain is supposed to continue right through Sunday, so after a brief discussion, we decided it would be better just to head out tomorrow for home. No sense sitting here in the rain, not getting a chance to ride, and making the horses stand in these tiny stalls the rest of the week. Besides, we have a busy week in store next week, and it will help us get a jump start on the essential cleaning that will need doing, and maybe even give us a day of rest.