Though we had hoped that Flash's fetlock would be fully healed by now, there's just enough trace of scabbing that we decided not to risk any setbacks, so I went out alone on my ride today, with the goal of riding all of the remaining nearby trails that were open. Trail 5, which goes off to the north, has been closed all summer because they've been working on it (which I hope doesn't include putting gravel down on it!), but all of the southern trails are open, so I designed a route to cover them all, all the way down to the other horse camp on 244. Well, I should say that it's more of an overnight stop than a horse camp, there's a big gravel parking lot there, one covered picnic table and two sets of 4 covered stalls. If you're only passing through and don't want to traverse the sometimes dubious gravel road all the way back into the Turnpike horse camp, this is a great alternative. Anyway, I headed out what turned out to be a long straight, wide trail which covered the eastern perimeter, then across the south side to the overnight horse stop, then I looped around on the remaining trails, only missing one trail marker (probably because I was busy looking at the map!), but it only led me about 100 feet out of my way. Again, it was a beautiful ride! Some of the trails were still sloppy, of course, but that's to be expected with the wet summer they've had all throughout this area, but less so on some of these more open trails, because it's been sunny the last few days and they've dried up a bit. There was hardly any grade on this section of trails, which will be perfect for Hubby next time we come here. Don't think we'll be able to ride again this week. Apollo enjoyed himself as well, though at one point he wanted to take a more direct route than me, so we had a moment of argument, but since his way had better footing, I changed my mind and did it his way. Two days in a row for him, that hasn't happened in a LONG time! Got back by mid-afternoon, then Hubby and I just sat around reading and relaxing the rest of the day. What a luxury! To just sit and do nothing extraneous! For a while there, I never thought I'd ever have a day like this, but now they're starting to come with more regularity. Wonderful! We finally went inside and had dinner and movie before heading to bed.

Despite reading for a long time before going to bed last night, I still didn't get very sleepy for way too long. Obviously too much sugar at the wedding, what with a table full of cakes, which, of course, each one had to be tried! I tried to cut the thinnest slice possible, but with three layers, it's pretty hard to cut a tiny piece! Anyway, I woke up kind of tired, but I wanted to get a ride in this morning. We had all talked about it around the bonfire last night, and despite my getting a late start, they were even later, so I saddled up Apollo (Flash's leg is almost healed, but I'm not taking any chances, and I washed it and put more wound salve on it today), got some great suggestions from Carol about which trails would be good to ride today, and off we went. I just wanted a short and easy ride today, and got exactly that! South down the road for about 100 yards to the west entrance to Trail 4, south to Trail 1, then a quick turn onto the west branch of Trail 3 northbound to the east side of Trail 4, then a quick hop onto Trail 5 to cross the road back to camp. What a lovely ride! I didn't get lost once, even though I lost my map, but I managed to have a good cell signal and downloaded a copy of the map to my phone, something I think I'll get in the habit of doing anyway just as a precaution. It was a wonderful ride, the most relaxing ride I've been on in weeks! Though the trails were quite muddy from all the rain they've had here this summer (and everywhere in the Midwest, it seems!), there were still a lot of areas that were really nice, and Apollo was his usual reliable self, all I had to do was point him in the right direction at the intersections and let him go, he found his own footing around mud, detours around trees, he was perfect! Got back to camp in barely 90 minutes, which was fine, and started to get Hubby ready for dialysis. That got a bit delayed by my neighbors visiting, returning my lost map which they found on the trails, and buying copies of my book, but that was fine, we still got started in plenty of time. Had a little power outage problem, not quite sure what happened, but we had to end the dialysis session early, though we had taken most of the fluids off. Oh well, we'll make up for it next time! Spent the evening watching old movies, getting caught up on my computer work, and super-relaxing, since we're now on our own and it's so quiet out here, we're loving it! This is definitely a place that we'll come back to, especially now since my brother from another mother lives so close by here!

Had another great night sleep, and was up a bit earlier, so I decided I could get a short ride in this morning before dialysis this afternoon. After having my juice with Hubby, I saddled up Apollo (Flash is still a bit gimpy, but MUCH improved!), spoke to our neighbors across the way who were saddling up when I left, who said they were heading north to the country club for lunch, I told them I was going to try to find the reverse of the loop I tried to find the other day, and off I went. Once again, I'm sorry to say, the trails were poorly marked and had NO relationship to the map whatsoever! I headed out what I though was the reverse of the orange trail, only to find I was on the red trail, though they were both supposed to be combined there. After crossing the road and walking on a road to a swamp, I did my best to follow the ribbons, but never found the turnoff for the orange trail (though I learned later that two unmarked trails that I passed were the right ones, but there were many unmarked trails, and I wasn't about to guess when I had time constraints!) I ended up following the red trail, and thought I was in one place, when in fact I was in another. There was less than a mile of better marked trails in the woods, then it opened onto a pipeline easement where the weeds were as tall as my head (on my horse!), with lots of brambles, making me wish I had chaps to wear! I looked diligently for any kind of a turn-off and never found one, and the markers for even the pipeline trail were non-existent. I finally hit a road, and there were red arrows indicating the trail went straight across, so that's what I did. A hundred yards later I was looking at a river with no obvious ford to it, so I came back to what might have passed as a muddy road that had been underwater not long ago, but after 100 yards up that road I still didn't see any markers. As I headed back to the road crossing, still looking for markers, a pipeline employee came by, but he didn't know the trails either, but as we were talking, I saw my neighbors from camp coming down the same trail I had just come! That was weird because I thought they were going north, and I thought I was going south, I guess it turned out we were both going west! Well, they tried to find markers, too, with no luck, and we went for a short stretch along another pipeline easement that dead-ended, and since by now I had been out nearly two hours (which was what I had intended the entire ride to be!) I was forced to give up and make a linear retreat, something I absolutely hate to do when there's a loop to be found! I just couldn't afford the time any more, so I left the couple to keep exploring while I hoofed it back to camp. Grrrr!!! So frustrating! In this day and age, there's just no excuse for such a poor map, and equally poor trail markings. Some of the worst I've ever seen, and I've seen some pretty bad ones in my day! When I got back and overlaid my actual route over their trail map on Google Earth, literally, the only thing that lined up was the little bit of time I spent on the road. That's it. Everything else was way off! When I got back to camp, one of the trustees was talking to Hubby, and I mentioned the fact that I had been out twice and gotten lost half a dozen times on each ride, she got understandably defensive, but couldn't offer anything but some pretty poor excuses, and proceeded to explain to me that the reason I couldn't find the trail markers was because the pipeline company had put a stone wall over their trail to keep ATVers out of a cemetery, but all I had to do was turn left (the opposite of the way it shows it on the map) to go around the rocks and through the cemetery, and then I would find the rest of the markers for the red trail. Well, that's all fine, but how is someone who doesn't know that figure that out?? So frustrating!! Later, after dialysis (which was a good one today!), I went and chatted with the neighbors to see if they ever found those markers, and they didn't either, saying they turned and went down that road for a bit until they finally found where another trail crossed and picked up the blue trail, but never found the orange or the red trail as they had planned. They emailed me their GPS data and when I laid it on my Google Earth map, it left me speechless, which is saying something! There is not one bit of trail that lined up with markings on the map. Not one! Where the map shows the blue trail as a nice round loop, the actual trail is a squiggly, many sided thing that's almost the shape of an 8, and isn't even in the same vicinity as what's on the map! I've seen some bad maps, but these have to be the worst ever. I can only think that it's deliberate, that the locals don't really want casual riders from outside to come in, and if that's the plan, it's working, because no one is going to put up with being that frustrated for very long. I've vowed to ride every trail in the next three months when we come back here, and make my own map, so at least I won't get lost again, and hopefully, I can pass that along to other newbies in need. Very annoying. Anyway, after our good dialysis session and playing a bit with Lola, we settled down to a couple of short programs before heading to bed. Hoping for yet another good night sleep, but there is a line of thunderstorms coming our way, still debating where I should put Lola in the truck or not, because at the first sign of lightning, she'll be scratching at the bedroom door. Anyway, bedtime!

Still didn't have a great night sleep last night, not sure why, maybe it's too cool! Wouldn't that be a switch! Anyway, I started out slowly this morning, but eventually decided to take Apollo for a ride just to get a feel for the trails and the neighborhood. Got him saddled up and headed out of the camp out the driveway and on to the orange trailhead, as I had been told the blue trail was mostly downhill and therefore much muddier than the other trails, so that's where I headed. I had estimated just a short 5+- mile around the smallest loop I could find, but naturally I got lost and ending up doing 7.75 miles instead. I swear, the hardest thing to do is to follow a map and a trail that's been done by people that have ridden those trails so long they never even think about what it's like to be a newbie. As usual, once you're on a trail the markings are generally clear, but for some reason, as the intersections, it become a whole new ballgame, there seldom seems to be clear markings as to which way to go. When I finally reached an intersection that I understood, I realized I have gone about twice as far as I had planned, and that I was on the east side of the loop when I though I was on the west side of it. Since I didn't want to have to stretch out the ride to another, longer loop, I uncharacteristically turned around to return to where I was going to go in the first place. Along the way, I passed a group of riders from a summer camp, a long string of 15+ horses with young people astride. I asked the leader if I was going in the right direction to get to back to the orange trail, and she gave me a fairly detailed description of where to find it, and off I went. A quarter mile later, a car caught up to me (several of the trails follow roads for a ways, not my favorite), and she told me the leader was concerned she had given me wrong directions and asked her to chase me down to correct it! You gotta love Ohioans, they go above and beyond to be helpful! Of course, in spite of all the help, that didn't keep me from getting lost a few more times along the way. I kept following the orange tags on the trees, and then the markings painted on the roads (which are pretty faded and covered with dirt, so they're easy to miss) and tried to follow the map, but the way the trails are marked on the map are painted with a really broad brush. When I zoom into it on Google Earth, the markings cover about 100 yards on the ground, so kind of tough to see where the trail really is. And when I finally made it back and put the trail on my overlay, in some places it wasn't even close! Guess I better have a conversation with trailmeister Ellen before I head out again! After following orange tags around in a circle of little used jungle, I opted for the more traveled path, which took me to the road across from the KOA, and from there I just followed the road home. Not what the trail was supposed to do, and even after looking at it on Google Earth I can't figure out where I went wrong. Sigh... Oh, well, never a dull moment! I finally made I back to camp, and as I was unsaddling Apollo, one of the Trustees of the club, Elaine, came over to see if I was all right. She was concerned that I went out on my own and was taking a long time to get back, so she stayed around just to make sure everything was okay with me. Like I said, above and beyond! Once I assured her everything was fine other than the occasional detour, she headed on out, promising to come by another day over the weekend. Overall a decent ride, some muddy spots like everywhere we've been this year, but mostly dirt, very little gravel, so boots were not necessary, thank goodness. I let Apollo graze on clover for a bit, treated Flash's foot again, then got busy getting Hubby on his dialysis session before finally settling down for the evening.

Since poor Apollo hasn't been able to get ridden much lately, I decided to take him for a short ride before the heat and rain came in, and there was one trailhead out of the campground I hadn't experienced yet, so I saddled him up and headed out on the white trail near the day parking area. It turned out to be one of the best trails out here! It wasn't too steep going out of the camp like all of the other trails were, and soon turned into a road that would have been perfect for Hubby if he had been riding with me, a nice slow grade down to the creek before rising gradually again. I followed it to a place known as Badger Cave on the map, which looped around nicely. If Hubby had been with me it would have been a perfectly nice loop back to the camp, but I decided to go out a bit further and take the purple trail back again. Of course, there were still a lot of muddy spots, but after several days without rain they were better than they had been, and the white trail wasn't bad at all, though there were a number of trees down along the way, none over the trail, fortunately. When I got back to marker B, I started up the red trail to the camp, but a large tree had apparently recently come down, as I didn't see any track marks of anyone trying to get around it, and it was too wild and steep to try to get around it, so I backtracked and took the red (or is it purple?) the long way back to camp, which was still pretty muddy, but not bad. Apollo was totally saturated with sweat by the time we got back to camp, the heat and humidity was so bad. I gave him a nice cold bath and let him graze on some clover before putting him back on the highline. Got a few chores done, got Hubby hooked up on his dialysis machine, and relaxed the rest of the day. Normally I would be packing up as much as I could for an early start tomorrow, but having spoken to the president at Tri-County where we're headed, he wanted to meet with us and couldn't be there until 4:00, so I decided to leave most of the work until morning, since I would have so much time. Settled down for the evening, as usual, grateful for another day on the road!

Well, after all the rain yesterday, I expected the trails to be pretty sloppy today, and no surprise, they were! Nevertheless, today's the day I put aside to take Flash on the long perimeter ride out to Airplane rock and points east, and since the weather is forecast to only get hotter over the next few days, I figure this is my last chance. Saddled him up and headed out on my own down the orange trail, slipping, sliding and sucking hooves out of muck most of the way down. Once I got past some of the more used section of the trails, though, it did get a little better. I'm glad Phyllis told me about how all the old white trails either loop around or go out to a linear destination and dead end, it helped me not get lost today. On the old map, the orange trail was an entire loop, on the old map, the orange trail became a white trail at Airplane Rock, and on the ground it's still white, but then it turned to orange later, as if someone had started to change to markings and didn't finish or I missed an intersection somewhere. In any event, the ride took me along some really mucky areas, and then into some long stretches of gravel (though I didn't bring horse boots since I knew I'd lose them in the muck, or have to take them off and put them back on half a dozen times), but it didn't seem to bother Flash too much. The trail had it's highlights, though Airplane rock was kind of a disappointment. I'm not sure what I was expecting, maybe a rock suspended precariously on another rock or something, but this was essentially just a bluff with a view. Granted, the outcropping did look like the nose of an airplane when looking from the side, but the call the actually bluff it's "wings" seemed like a stretch. Of course, my house in on a bluff, and our view is much more expansive, so I guess I'm spoiled. Maybe it was the buildup to it. The trail led up to a area that was cordoned off, with a bunch of highlines stretched between trees and half a dozen picnic tables and even an outhouse. It made it seem like it would be something spectacular like Niagara Falls or something. Anyway, I did tie up Flash on the highline and walk down to the rock, taking pictures along the way. We rested a bit before moving out on what will be the orange trail going north, but is still the white trail for now. That actually turned out to be my favorite part of the trail once it went back into the woods after a stretch on a road. I think I passed Twin Falls and Chapel Cave, but I'm not sure because the trail seemed to go above it, not to it, but there was less much and gravel here, a truly nice section of trail. Eventually that took us down again, and we came to a creek with dubious markings again, but I managed to get on the right orange trail (there was a white trail leaving the creek as well) and before long we were back on the long stretch home. It was nearly 11 miles, less than 4 hours, so a good long ride for us both, which we needed. Flash didn't seem any worse for the wear, though the heat was pretty intense by the time we got back to camp. I gave him a nice cool bath and put him away, then boiled some eggs to make deviled eggs with later, then sat in my chair a dozed off for awhile. One of the campers up the road from me had invited me to his fish fry tonight, and as I went by on the way back to camp I confirmed the time as 6:00. I set my alarm for 5:00 so I would have time to finish off my deviled eggs for the fish fry, and wandered up about 10 minutes early, only to find everyone had already started eating. I joined in, ate, chatted with some folks, then about a half hour into it, it began to rain! This was NOT in the forecast, it was supposed to be clear for the next few days, and I had left my saddle and tack on the picnic table to dry after I came back from my ride! I waited around for a bit until the rain stopped, then made my departure back to my site, where I finished wiping down and putting away all my tack. It gave me a good excuse to wash my lambs wool seat cover, though, it needed it after all the mud we've been riding through! That took me the better part of an hour to get all that done, and I was exhausted by then, so I took a much needed shower and settled down for what was left of the evening.

Amazingly, Hubby felt well enough to ride again today, so happy he's feeling better! I think this new dialysis schedule of one day on, on day off is doing him a world of good. We just have to hope his blood is getting clean enough, which we should know soon from the labs we drew last week. Anyway, We had breakfast, and then I got the horses saddled, and again, Hubby rode Apollo. We decided to take a loop that was less than three miles, and that hopefully was a bit more gradual on the downhill grade than the orange trail. The start of that trail was up the road just a bit, but we decided to take Lola with us today, she's been feeling a bit left out lately, especially having to be on a leash so much of the time here. We found the trailhead with no problem, but just as we crossed the road, Hubby lost a fastener on his slobber strap, so I had to stop and jury-rig it with a spare piece of leather string I had strapped to my saddle. Once that was done, we continued on our way, and it was quite a nice ride, except that there was a couple of trees down, one that required us to climb quite a ways up a hill to get around, and Hubby got a little stuck for a few minutes (he had to rest from the exertion), but eventually he got around it with only one small scrape on his arm. After a few more rests along the way, we managed to reach the orange trail with it's upward climb, and were back in camp in no time. Another great ride for Hubby!! Yay!!! No trouble dismounting, and he made it back to his comfy gravity chair, where he planned to stay most of the rest of the day, reading. I unsaddled Apollo and put him away, but I still wanted to take a longer ride, though I realized it wouldn't be the long ride I had planned yesterday, but another ride was still possible. So I headed back out the orange trail, which is about the main trail that most other trails end up on at one time or another, and based on some suggestions from Phyllis, turned left at Marker M, which led me to a fence, turned right there, and right again when I came to the next "T." This took me on a trail that was marked white on the trees (which, evidently, is how practically every single side trail is marked, including all directions at every intersection, so it's not very helpful), but on the map it's marked in purple. The story I got from Phyllis was that evidently all the trail markers are sitting around somewhere waiting to be put up, but the powers-that-be didn't want the trail markers to go up until the maps were printed and ready for distribution. Well, they were distributed last Monday, but since the trail markers aren't up yet, it's very confusing to someone who doesn't know their way around, like me. The route that Phyllis recommended, she said wasn't even on the map! How crazy is that? Anyway, I did follow her instructions, and it was quite a lovely ride, weaving along edges of bluffs and and through the woods. Most of the footing was pretty good, with only a few really sloppy spots. Fortunately, there weren't any other trees down along that route, so we had no more detour troubles. When we turned onto the orange trail for the final leg home, I let Flash pick and choose his own way, trying to get him to use his mind a bit more. In the woods, I still have to steer him around practically every tree or he starts heading off the trail, but when I let him choose his own way on the orange trail, I think he finally started to get the idea that he could make his own decisions, and that seemed like a new idea to him. I think he's always been kept under a tight rein, never having to think for himself, but I really need to get him like Apollo, where he can just be put on a loose rein and he'll know to follow the trail himself without constant supervision. A work in progress, for sure! When I got back and downloaded the route to MapMyHike,which was just over 4.5 miles, then opened it in Google Earth and overlaid it on the trail map, it turned out that trail was on the map after all! It was just colored purple when the trail markers were white, so I guess that must have been confusing to even an old hand like Phyllis! Anyway, it was after 4:00 by the time I got back, so I quickly got everyone and everything put away and settled down for the evening. Was delighted to see our neighbors with the generator had packed up and left, so I'm looking forward to a quiet night and a good night sleep tonight!

Didn't have the best night sleep last night, not sure why, but slept a little late because of it. Got up about 8:30 to hungry horses, had breakfast with Hubby, then decided to get in a ride before his dialysis session. There was rain in the forecast for this afternoon, and considering how muddy so many of the trails are already, I figured I better get a ride in before they get any worse. I saddled up Flash and headed out, having planned to do the purple trail to the orange trail in a loop. Of course, I got lost at the first intersection. I thought I left on a red trail, but when I got to the bottom, the trees were blazed in white. I couldn't quite figure out how that happened, but at the creek there was a sign that said I was at Marker B. From there I was supposed to take the red trail that I thought I was on straight to the purple trail, but since I believed I was on the white trail, and there were two red trails and two white trails marked at the intersection, I couldn't figure out which red trail I was supposed to take. Eeeny, meeny, miney, moe, I picked a red trail, which was a nice trail, but never ran into the purple trail, and in fact, came out at the entrance to the day parking area at the camp! What the heck! Whatever. I decided to do the trail in reverse since that was closer, so I headed south on the orange trail and followed that until I got to a place where the orange trail seemed to fork. Hmmm, not on the map. I finally figured out that one fork went to a kiosk and the other along the road. I couldn't find any markings, except that it appeared that the orange trail continued past the kiosk. Purple had to be along the road, but I went down a hundred yards, didn't see any markings, turned around because I thought I must be wrong, and THEN, FINALLY, saw a purple blaze on a tree going in the opposite direction. Guess I was on the right track after all. Since we were going on a gravel road, though, I stopped to put on Flash's boots, then headed down that way for a while. Then we came to more purple blazes that went into a deep wood, so the trails were particularly mucky, and what appeared to be a trail along the utility line that paralleled it, which was mostly dry. We opted for the dry route, hoping it wouldn't get too far from the purple mud. Fortunately, it didn't, it crossed over purple again later. When we reacquired the purple trail, it was sloppy downhill for quite a ways, and of course, Flash lost a boot, so we had to stop on the hill and I had to go back and retrieve it. He was a little antsy, but not as much as usual, and I left both boots off and kept going. That ended up on a road that went through a neighborhood of log cabins. I hadn't realized the trail would become road, but the blazes were still there, so I kept following it. Eventually, back on the trail again, we ended up back at the same Marker B at the creek. Since I remembered which trail we came down, and which trail we took up the wrong way, it was easy to get back to camp, using the shortest distance, which was the one we came down, of course. A bit longer, later and muddier than I had planned, but we made it, nine miles! There was a line of other people washing down their horses at the one spigot that you connect a hose to, so I had to wait awhile before I could get Flash washed down, but he was soon on his highline and I was soon getting ready for Hubby's dialysis. The session went well, we started watching an old John Wayne film neither of us could remember seeing before, and then the storms moved in. Boy, did it storm! Rain, wind, even hail for awhile was knocking on the roof and awning! Fortunately this awning with the weight of the screen room doesn't seem to be bothered much by the wind, so other than rain running off the awning and under the grass carpet, we had no problems. The electric flashed out for a moment, but I had already put the inverter on, so it transferred immediately and we had no loss of power at all, thank goodness, though I did have to restart the washer and dryer, as I was doing laundry today, too. Busy day! Had dinner, Hubby went to bed early, and I did some writing on my blog, though I can't upload it right away, as evidently the cell phone tower doesn't have power or has some other mechanical problem, as there is now zero cell phone reception at the moment. Now all I can do is take a quick shower and head off to bed! Good, though tiring, day!!

Hubby had been telling me for days now that he intended to ride once we arrived here, but I didn't realize he meant that he wanted to do that even before I had a chance to explore the trails! But I'm not going to deprive him, if he's feeling up to it, then we go! After breakfast I got the horses saddled up, and we had decided in a previous conversation that he might be better suited to ride Apollo than Flash. Since I hadn't ridden Flash in more than a week, and he still needed constant guidance on the trails (i.e. He needed to be steered around practically every tree because he still hasn't engaged the thinking side of his brain), and Apollo had reminded me last week of how beautifully well-behaved he was on the trails, we just agreed it was a better fit, even though his height made it a bit more challenging. But with the picnic tables in our campsite, Hubby was able to climb up on the bench of the table, and from there, with just a little help from me, he was able to climb on while Apollo stood as still as a stone (another advantage over Flash, we're still working on the standing still part of the equation). Upon the suggestion of our neighbors, we headed south on the orange trail, crossing the quiet road we came in on and before long, we found ourselves heading downhill for quite a long while. The footing was quite muddy, and there was some slipping going on, and unfortunately, going downhill is the most painful position for Hubby and his weak legs and back, so we only went about a mile before he said he's had enough and we turned around and went back uphill, which fortunately, doesn't hurt him anywhere near as much, so he was okay by the time we got back to camp. Apollo jogged and even cantered a couple of steps, so it was a good ride (albeit short) for Hubby's first day out since April. He even managed to dismount straight to the ground without hardly any help from me! It was a little less than an hour, but it was a great first step, and one we can build on. After all, his muscles have atrophied so much in the last year, it's bound to take some time to get stronger again. Once I put the horses back on their highline, I got all the supplies for his dialysis, and we spent the afternoon dialyzing and watching old movies. This place has full bars of 4G on Verizon, so Prime and Netflix are a breeze this week! Yay! Had a nice salad for dinner and we settled down to our usual evening activities.

It seemed cooler to me this morning, so I decided to take a short ride on Apollo before the heat of the day built up. There was a very short loop, just over two miles that I wanted to try, because I thought it might be a good one for Hubby if we come back here some time. Turned out to be quite perfect for that, most of the grades were quite manageable, most of the trail was dirt and mud, though it did come out on the road (with no signage as to which way to turn, except in 50 feet a sign that said "No Horses, $100 fine." Obviously I turned around when I saw that, and quickly realized that I was just beyond the entrance to the horse camp, so I headed back there on the road. Less than an hour, but when I got back to camp there were 4 or 5 livestock trailers with riders saddling up to get out on the trail. Lola was busy training one of the kids how to throw for her, but I let her be while I put Apollo away (he was brilliant again today, of course!) We started Hubby early on dialysis so we could enjoy an earlier evening, and I'm happy to say it all went pretty well today, with only a little bit of low blood pressure problems, which is our biggest concern. I packed up a few things in preparation for our departure tomorrow (as much as I could stand in the heat), and we kept the air conditioning going most of the evening, since we knew we had enough propane to last the night. Looking forward to moving north, though, as we are in search of 70 degrees, not 90. Unfortunately, we left home about a month too late this year because of all the work we had to do on the house to get it ready for sale. Not going to happen again!!!