Having deliberately scheduled a slightly later flight, we got up at our usual business schedule time (about 6:00 am), took our showers, got mostly packed, then I had a conference call with a potential client for about 20 minutes before going down to our last breakfast at the hotel. Before we knew it we were dropping off the rental car, shuttling the 15 minutes to the airport, going through security, and waiting for our departure, which, thankfully, was on time. Another delicious meal of pasta, salad and pita with hummus (though undoubtedly with WAY too much salt for Hubby, he’ll be complaining when he gets on the scale tomorrow), once again surprised at the inconsistency of first class service on USAir. Seems they all have their own ideas of what makes for good service, can’t say I was too impressed with this woman. Every other meal they didn’t try to cram the dessert on the tray, this one did, and it was hard to get around everything. Anyway, we got back pretty much on schedule, headed straight back to the farm, said our greetings to everyone, and because we were feeling exhausted, and it wasn’t too long before we were in bed!

After three busy days, early mornings and full work schedule, we finally go to sleep in somewhat late, but still in time for breakfast at the hotel. We had an email from Hubby’s sister, who’s still in England, saying she’s finally got Skype, so we arranged to link up today, and all went well, despite how technically unsavvy she claims to be. She even managed to get the video going with just a tiny bit of instruction, I was very proud of her! We chatted for about 20 minutes, marveling at the ability to see each other while having a phone call, discussing all the usual family stuff before signing off before going off the breakfast. We decided to take a drive out today, to check out on possible boarding places for when we come back this way later this year. Since we missed Nevada on our earlier Western tour, it will likely be the last of our 48 state riding stops, and we figured we might be able to drum up some business at the same time, or at least have it be a stopover on our way south for the winter. We even suggested to Hubby’s sister that she might want to visit the U.S. again, and this would give her a completely different experience than her Florida and Tennessee visits. She said she would consider it, but she’s dealing with a bad knee at the moment, and it will depend on how well her recovery goes. Anyway, we visited three different stables, two of which are good possibilities, the third was a show barn that didn’t board anyone that wasn’t also in a “training program.” We’ll worry about that later when the time comes. We headed back to the hotel, then took a quick nap in the afternoon before heading out to dinner and a show. We had planned on going to an Indian restaurant in the Hawaiian market, but they were closed when we arrived, so we then opted to head to the Mirage (where the show was) and get a meal there. We ended up at BLT burgers, but true to form, neither of us had a true beef burger. Hubby had a salmon sandwich, and I had a lamb tandoori, which was essentially lamb meat ground and shaped into a burger, still on a bun, but with a mint/coriander topping. Both were quite nice, actually, so it was a good choice, along with a stout and ale. Next to us was a couple of guys from England who had just arrived for a blowout weekend, and we chatted for a bit with them, helping one with his phone and letting him use my phone to text someone. After saying our goodbyes, we made our way to the theatre, where I had ordered tickets for the Terry Fator show. I was fortunate to get something in the center section, and the show ended up being sold out. It was a lot of fun. He is a ventriloquist who does impressions and sings alone as well, and it was full of both hilarious and touching moments. First time we’ve actually taken the time to see a show in Vegas! Long overdue, and a nice treat. The show went from 7-9, so we were back at the hotel in plenty of time to have a brandy and settle down for the night.

Had a pretty bad night’s sleep. I don’t know if it was eating dinner so late (at least it seemed late, with the three hour time change), or the coffee, or the drinks, or what it was, but I had a dickens of a time getting to sleep, and it was fitful all night long. I woke up every hour or so, and I could still hear a rattling from the AC every few minutes, even greater than the regular rattling from it just going on. Unfortunately, the unit was built into the wall of the bedroom, so there was not escaping it. We finally went out to do some errands, including buying Hubby a new pair of (larger) pants, because of the weight we’ve been putting on in the last few months. Serious diet once we get back to our old, usual routine!! Got back to the room, had maintenance come and fix the AC (a very nice fellow names Louis), so at least it didn’t have the extra rattle, and spent the rest of the day reading, sleeping and in the evening, watching a movie. Good thing we did, by the end of the day, I was feeling much more rested, and I have a very big day tomorrow!

The day went as planned, with packing in the morning, driving to the airport, parking the van first, hauling all our stuff to the airport, checking in our baggage, and eventually settling into our first class seats in the front row of the airplane. A few cocktails and a lovely beef dinner later, we eventually arrived in Vegas, in the daylight hours for the first time ever! The skies has been clear almost all the way across the country, so it was a lovely trip, and we even got an excellent bird’s eye view of the Grand Canyon! Something we’ve always missed because it’s either been dark or cloudy. Really beautiful to be able to see so much of it at once. An otherwise uneventful flight. We made the mistake of leaving Hubby behind to get the luggage while I took the shuttle to the rental car place, I had forgotten how far it was, and soon discovered there is no place at baggage claim for private pickups, only commercials ones, so I had to park the car, find Hubby, who had been waiting quite a while, move everything to the opposite side of the baggage claim area, out to the parking area, and finally on the road, a good hour after landing! Headed to the nearest store for necessary items, then to the hotel. The first room they gave us was too close to the end of the hall, where that humming noise I suffered from before was still prevalent, so they moved us to another room that still overlooked the pool, but didn’t have that extra hum. The A/C was pretty loud, though, and I had to put my earplugs in, but even that didn’t help too much. Very tired after the day of travel, but didn’t feel sleepy when I went to bed. We’ll see how it goes!

Set the alarm for an early start, as we had some running around to do after we get everyone settled at Jena’s. Arrived safe and sound, just a short half hour trip, though we stopped at Waffle House for breakfast just because we had enough time for a sit-down breakfast. Arrived just before 11:00, got everyone settled, ran out to do some shopping for oats and dog food, among other things, chatted for awhile with the family, then relaxed for the evening. Our flight isn’t until late afternoon, so we plan to sleep late and pack in the morning, if that’s at all possible! The dogs jumped right back into the pack of dogs that are here, I’m so glad they all get along so well. I notice Billy is a lot less pushy, obviously because he’s so outnumbered, but that’s a good things, it puts him on his best behavior. The horses weren’t too thrilled to be back, as there’s no real grass in the paddock, and the paddock next door has a bunch of horses in it, and by the end of the day, Clio had some scratches on her face and head, which I promptly treated with Vetermicyn. Don’t know that the tussle was about, or with whom, but it seemed to have been sorted out by the end of the day. Went to bed early, knowing tomorrow would be a long, long day.

Headed out by 11:00 with plans to do the entire perimeter loop around the park. This time we put boots on the horses just because we felt some areas might get a little rockier, and because the trip was a longer one. We were glad we did because we did have some rocky climbs up the mountain. It was a lovely ride, this time going clockwise around the loop, instead of a linear line on the counterclockwise loop just to the Visitor Center. We stopped in a few places for a few minutes just for a break, but in the end, the trip was still only just over three hours or so, just right for a “long” trip for us. The horses, again, were brilliant, with no hesitation on anything we asked them to do, and they seemed to enjoy being back in the fold again, too, after such a seemingly long time away. I’m just sorry we have to leave them again for a week for our next (and almost last) bit of business before the summer begins!

Despite all good intentions to ride today, we decided we needed a few things, so I ran into town to shop, while Hubby and the horses rested all day. Had a relaxing evening, though I still feel I have a long way to go before I’m truly relaxed. Wish I hadn’t had to spend time running around, but that’s the way it goes sometimes! Looking forward to a nice ride tomorrow.

After a reasonably pleasant evening last night, we managed to get quite a good night’s sleep, thank goodness, so we had better spirits this morning. Those, of course, immediately improved when we decided it was time to go for a ride. I had given Hubby some Alka-Seltzer fizzy cold tablets before he went back to bed yesterday, and that improved him tremendously, enough to be ready to ride today. We decided to take a fairly short ride today, just to get the horses sorted out, and we headed out about 1:00. We didn’t follow the trail exactly, some parts of it we took a main dirt road, but most of it was really lovely. Footing was mostly dirt with a few areas of stone, but not enough for us to be worried about putting boots on the horses, though we brought them along just in case. In about 75 minutes, we arrived across the road from the Visitor Center for the Kings Mountain Military Park, where we tied the horses to a hitching rail and walked across the road to the museum. We spent nearly an hour in the museum, looking with great interest at the various exhibits, which explained the occurrences on a particularly fateful day in 1789 when the local mountain men demolished a good portion of the British forces in the area, and making it one of the final nails in the Brits coffin in terms of American Independence. It was a particularly telling lesson, particularly after our run-in with our overbearing government yesterday. We didn’t have time to walk the battlefield, we’ll have to save that for another day! Anyway, the horses were brilliant, very well behaved, with Apollo especially good since I put some extra padding under his saddle. He never jumps anymore when going into a canter, confirming the problem has probably been his saddle all along! I can’t wait to try out my new bareback saddle, which I would have been using today if horse.com had sent it to the right shipping address, instead of my billing address, which was very disappointing when I discovered it a few weeks ago. Anyway, it will be waiting for me when we get home to Tennessee in a few weeks, I can’t wait to see how it works! Meanwhile, it was a very good ride, long enough to give everyone a good workout, short enough not to tire anyone out too much, about three hours of riding, so we got back around 5:00, just in time to feed everyone! A relaxing evening, and still, no sign of rain!

Woke up to a gorgeous morning, with sun breaking through the clouds, and me looking forward to getting in a nice ride today, since the weather had finally turned in our favor. Unfortunately Hubby wasn’t feeling very well, he thought he might have caught some kind of bug from the dampness of the past few days, so I assigned him sleep duty and sent him back to bed. Around about 11:00, a couple of guys were out mowing the grass and doing other landscaping chores, and they let us know that it was possible with all the rain that the road coming into the campground might run across the road, but we said it was no problem, as we weren’t planning on going anywhere until Friday, and the rain was mostly passed, except for one more possible bunch this afternoon or evening, plenty of time for high water to recede. Then after 2:00 in the afternoon, a ranger came by and informed us they were closing the campground, and that we HAD to LEAVE! I tried to point out that we weren’t leaving until Friday, and we were self-contained and didn’t need to go out, but no matter what argument I used, he was determined to force us to leave. I explained my husband wasn’t feeling well. No go. I showed him our high clearance vehicles that could easily traverse almost any water crossing. No go. I explained we didn’t have anyplace else to go, especially this late in the day, since it would take us a good two hours to pack up. No go. No matter what I said, he just became more belligerent. When I asked him what he would do if I simply refused, he claimed he would call for a tow truck and animal control and forcibly remove us!! Look, I get they want to keep us “safe,” but it created extremely difficult problems for us, and all because it MIGHT rain some more, and it MIGHT overflow the creek over the road, and it MIGHT make it temporarily impassible, and at that inopportune moment we MIGHT have an emergency that would require a first responder, blah, blah, blah! As much as I appreciate them notifying us of the possible danger, that should have been the end of it. It should ultimately be up to us, the citizen, to decide whether or not we’re willing to take the risk, not up to the jack-booted rangers to force us to do something that created immeasurably more difficulties for us. I even called the main ranger station and got the same nonsense from them, claiming the decisions had been made at the main office (who have no knowledge of the circumstances on the ground) and were equally intractable. So after much argument and bad feelings, Hubby had to crawl out of bed, get dressed, and start packing up everything. I told the ranger he could go away and come back in two hours, which is about how long we figured it would take us to pack up and leave, but he insisted on hovering over us (without helping, of course), treating us like a couple of prisoners and he was the warden. Very annoying. I finally had to ask the woman at the main ranger station to radio this guy and get him to back off, my attitude was not being helped by his overbearing presence, and he finally left. True to our timing, it was just after 4:00 before we were ready to go, and we passed him in sullen silence as we went through the campground gate, ignoring him completely. As we passed the bridge in question, we were stunned that the water was still several feet below the road, and unless they had tremendous amounts of rain (which only a little rain was forecast), it posed no threat whatsoever, so our entire episode was unnecessary. As soon as I could, I called ahead to Kings Mountain, which was the only horse camp between us and Charlotte, and we didn’t want to go further away considering we had to come back in a few days anyway, so we let them know we were coming, but that we couldn’t make it by 5:00. They said they’d keep an eye out for us, and true to their word, a nice young ranger was waiting for us when we arrived. We spent a few minutes dumping our black water while I checked in, then we headed down to the campground. At least there’s a cell phone signal here, though satellite is impossible, as it’s too wooded with no openings to point through. What a waste of a beautiful day! We ran into nothing but sun and partly cloudy skies, no sign of rain whatsoever, which did little to soothe my irritation, and, of course, the extent of my exhaustion from such a busy few months was such that I was a long way from full rest and recovery, so I was much more irritable than I ever like to be. Of course, it’s compounded by my ever-growing realization of just how close we are to a police state in this country, when we are forced to rescind our right to take care of ourselves and take risks and responsibilities on our own, and hand over that task to a government that continues to prove time and time again that they are not capable of looking after themselves, much less the citizenry. The day of revolt is coming, I fear, unless people wake up and realize just how bad it’s getting and change the political system back to a responsible republic, not the nanny-mothering (or should I say “smothering”) state that it’s rapidly becoming. Enough of my rant, I’ll be better once I get back on my horse!!

Rained all night and all day today, so other than looking after the horses, we spent the day reading and watching TV. Very valuable day for us to put more deposits in our sleep bank!