Slept late again, and today, finally, we pretty much just relaxed. Contrary to the rest of the country, we enjoyed a steak for dinner, a real luxury, as we haven’t had much since we started our diet at the beginning of the year. Thankful for our fabulous animals, thankful for our incredible life, thankful for our excellent health, thankful for each and every day we get to keep living the dream!

At last, the weather was nice enough (it has been too cold to ride) to go for a ride. Apparently there is only basic trail with lots of criss-crossing, but all we did was stay on the main trail, which was just about a five or six mile loop. It was mostly in the woods, and the footing was good, no stones, mostly hard dirt with some sand. I still have some residual pain in my side from the fall I took, so all I wanted to do today was walk. After a couple of miles, though, Apollo wanted to do something more, and at one point he suddenly kicked up without warning and jumped a few steps. Fortunately, I managed to stay on, though my side was punished in the process. Hubby’s mare followed suite without warning, and Hubby ended up over the saddle and somehow managed to hang onto Clio’s neck, which fortunately broke his fall almost entirely. It was rather amusing, really, when I look back and saw him hanging like a monkey on the underside of Clio’s neck. Then he just dropped his legs, though he lost his balance and ended up sitting on the ground for a minute gathering his wits. No explanation from the horses as to their flighty behavior, they just stood there calmly. Well, we got back up again and carried on for awhile, until we came to a straightaway that Apollo thought would make a good race track. He leaped again, fortunately forward to I managed to hang on, then I let him run a little before reining him in again. That was it. I climbed down, found a clear spot off the trail, and ran him around in circles for about 10 minutes on the extra line on my McCarty setup. He kicked and galloped and jumped around in one direction, then I had him change directions and he kicked and galloped and jumped around in the other, until he finally wore himself out. I led him back to the trail and we set off again, much subdued. About a mile out, we did it again, not because he seemed as anxious to run off again, but just to make sure he didn’t get any ideas like that. We managed to make it back to the camp in good shape, and no one worse for the wear. Other than that, it was a good couple of hours. Trails not very exciting, they just kind of weave in and out of the trees, though they are pretty well marked, albeit a pretty short trip. Fine for what we needed, but for a long stay of riding, not so much. At least we got them back on the trail, and we both survived, which is always the goal!

More computer work, more reading, more movies.

Hubby ran some errands, including extending our stay here until Sunday. I spent the day on the computer again. Looking forward to getting caught up enough to actually REST!

Again spent some of the day on the computer, then watched movies. Gratefully uneventful!

Spent the day on the computer catching up on my blog. There are some boy scouts in the field next door, and we heard a generator running most of the day. Scouting isn’t just what it used to be! At one point, a stray beagle wandered into the camp. I managed to catch him and find a phone number on his collar, which I called. Turns out the dog had gone missing two weeks earlier while on a hunting trip, and the owner was happy to get him back. I asked him about any of the locals that might sell hay, and he gave me a name and number that I called later on. Looks like we’ll be able to find hay locally, which I’ve been searching for for several days. Nothing on craigslist, which is unusual. Wrong time of year, I guess. Anyway, an early night trying to relax a bit this week.

Slept late (as we had expected), packed up and headed out right at the noon checkout time. Met up with my old friend Steve at a local IHOP for brunch. He had just been around the globe in the last few weeks, first to Germany then to New Zealand, so his body clock thought breakfast at 12:30 was a good idea, too. After a pleasant meal, Hubby and I headed back to the stables where we unpacked our suitcases and prepared to pack up and leave the next day. The weather forecast had been calling for rain today and clear skies and cooler tomorrow, but they’ve been wrong about this rain for some time, and we’re concerned about getting out in the morning. We decided to hook up the horse trailer this afternoon and pull it out onto the driveway where it had better traction, but the van slipped and slid all over the place even WITHOUT the trailer behind it, so we decided to do something we had been planning on doing but hadn’t gotten around to; rotating the tires on the van. Last year, we had bought to huge honking Wrangler tires with giant tread (which look really MEAN on the van!). We put them on the front because the other tires had worn unevenly (for a long list of reasons too boring to talk about), and that made a loud thunking noise on the front, so we put the loud tires in the back and the new Wranglers on the front, figuring once the bumps were worn down that set would be quieter later on, which is exactly what happened. But the tread on the old tires, naturally, weren’t too great anymore (not bad enough to get rid of, just not great in certain circumstances, like soft, wet grass on a hill with weight behind it), so we headed out to the Wal-mart Auto Center, and two hours later they rotated the Wranglers to the back and the now smoother old tires to the front. Though it was dark, we decided to go ahead and try to move the horse trailer, since the newly revised forecast was calling for more rain during the evening and overnight hours. Fortunately, everything worked our perfectly. The Wranglers had no trouble gripping the grass, even with the added weight of the horse trailer behind it, and we managed to pull the trailer up onto the gravel driveway easily, with no damage to the yard. Moments afterward, it started drizzling again, so we congratulated ourselved on a job well done and headed inside to the warmth of the trailer and a hot meal of leftover Indian food. The rest of the evening was quiet, and we headed to be early in preparation for our early start tomorrow morning.