Well, contrary to our best laid plans, it turned out that sleeping (or not sleeping, as the case may be) in the van was a disaster! The wind whipped around us all night, and we soon realized that this was the equivalent to the "bridge ices first" scenario. The wind under the van made the air mattress ice cold, we were never able to get warm enough, we were freezing and wide awake all night (thanks in part to the coffee, no doubt, which I'm sure wasn't really decaf), and no matter what we did (short of running the van all night, which we didn't do), we had what was probably the worst night of our lives. I finally had Hubby pull a parka off the clothing rack in the van, and that helped me on one side, but the bottom side just never warmed up. We did our best to laugh at ourselves, but by morning, we were pretty uncomfortable, and the chill had started to seep into Hubby's lungs, which is never a good thing. He got a little sleep, but I'm not sure I got any, certainly no more than an hour off and on at best. We turned the van on at last, which helped a lot, then got dressed. Once the sun came up and started to warm things up, it improved, but it took a long time to feel warm again. After locating our group leader's camp, we found out that they wouldn't be moving trailers over until at least afternoon, so we decided to stay on our original plan and head to St. Cloud for breakfast. We unhooked the van and drove to IHOP, where we finally got fully warm, and had a nice big breakfast designed to get us through until dinner. We went to Walmart in the hopes of getting a couple of emergency thermal blankets, but, of course, they were out. We got a few other sundries before heading back to camp. We then learned that the line of corrals were, indeed, the ones that we had rented (and could have put the horses in last night, had someone mentioned that to us), so we moved over to the corral, driving across the field where others hadn't been yet, which was a lot less slippery. We learned several other people had gotten stuck in the mud in the same area as we had yesterday as well. We put the horses together in one corral, and put up the tent. We started with a tarp on the ground, then the tent, then our slickers in an effort to keep the cold away from us, then the air mattress, sleeping bags and quilt. Although the air mattress just fit into the tent, it didn't leave much room for anything else, though we managed to put our two bags along one edge, but it shoved me pretty much into the back side of the tent. The temps were supposed to be marginally higher overnight (37 as opposed to 33), so we kept our fingers crossed that being on the ground would help keep us warmer. Once that was done, I returned to the group leader's trailer to find out when we were supposed to be leaving (which I had understood we would do in groups at a designated time), only to learn that people were just going over when they were ready! I'm getting a bit concerned about the lack of communication, nobody seems to be communicating anything to anyone. I saw a long line of trailers departing the camp, so I decided to join them, having been told that there was a shuttle to bring us back. I headed down to the arena where the cattle drive will end, and managed to persuade them to let me stay near the front, as I would be selling books at the arena on the last day and needed to be close. Farther back it was so wet that trailers were getting stuck just trying to park, they had a tractor there pulling people around. I managed to get into a spot next to a Forest Service semi just off the gravel, so I'm hoping I won't have any trouble getting out later. After making a final check that I had everything we needed, I was directed to the "shuttle" that turned out to be a livestock trailer! Thank goodness Hubby insisted I take my coat with me, I would have been frozen again without it! Twenty minutes later I was back at camp, trying, along with Hubby, to get warm in our tent. Eventually we headed out to the dinner tent, looking forward to getting a bit more information than what we had been able to acquire thus far. Dinner was a couple of beef ribs, a quarter of a chicken, potato salad, corn, beans, and lemon meringue pie, all of which was cold by the time we reached a table. After dinner, the meeting started, and we were basically told our circle boss would fill us in on everything, so we broke down into smaller groups and waited... And waited... And waited. Our circle boss was nowhere to be found. The generator for the caterer was so loud, I don't think anyone could hear anything, so we eventually moved to the other side of the tent and waited some more. Finally, we headed over to the circle boss' trailer, where we finally found her, and she gave us a few facts. It seems another group was supposed to herd the cows in the morning, but that had changed to our group, so we would be heading out by 8:00, though she wanted us there by 7:30. That was it. We had to ask "Where" were we heading out from, and never got a decent answer. So we headed back to our tent in the dark, hoping it would all become clearer in the morning. The wind had diminished somewhat during the day, but it was still quite cold and breezy when we went to bed, hoping for a better night sleep than last night!
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