The day of departure has finally arrived! After much consideration, we had decided a few days away from the house to recharge our personal batteries was necessary before we tackled the challenges of being on the road, and we both knew that if we stayed here at the house, I would just keep finding jobs to do, and never get the rest I needed before we headed out, so we had decided to spend a few days at Circle E Guest Ranch in Belvidere, TN, which is just over an hour from where we live. We've been here once before during a Legacy event, which we were mostly busy selling books and attending events, though we did manage to ride a couple of times. From what I remember, the trails were either gravel roads, or un-maintained and overgrown single tracks, all not too well-marked. But we're not going there to ride, we're going there to rest! I had done as much prep work as I could last night, putting our new screen room away (we LOVE IT!), and generally packing up as much as I could. It hadn't rained for several days, and the corner of the driveway where we nearly got stuck last time was in much better shape, partly because it was dry and partly because I had taken the tractor and filled in the corner as well as spread more gravel on the outside of the corner to give me more "swing" space, so hopefully we can get out without any trauma today. One of the reason we decided to leave on a Sunday, which we generally don't like to do, is because the weather forecast is for rain every day this week, and we don't want to take any chances on that corner getting too soft, which might run us into trouble again. We were ahead of schedule, with plans to arrive at Circle E around noon (the offices closes at 1:00), but then we had a Flash delay. Though Apollo jumped into the trailer without hesitation, Flash decided he didn't want to go, and it took us nearly 45 minutes to get him loaded, darn it! That put us a bit behind, but we thought we could still make it. Then we ended up traveling a bit slower than I had anticipated, partly because it felt like the trailer was really heavy, and partly because it felt like the brakes were too loose. Now that's ANOTHER story. Last week I had a guy come up and do the brakes on the trailer. They really only needed the bearings to be re-packed and the brakes adjusted, and this clown only repacked the bearings and didn't even bother to adjust the brakes! Whoever heard of doing a brake job and not adjusting the brakes! And he had the audacity to charge me $300 for his lousy 3 hour job. And that was only because the parts I ordered on a Monday were never ordered, but I didn't find out until Thursday when I was ready to pick them up! Grrrr! Anyway, all that's behind us now, I was very careful going down our mountain, which is when I really noticed the brakes weren't doing as much as they were supposed to (not the best time to make that discovery!), and then we really dragged coming up the other side of the plateau to Circle E. My truck went into low gears I didn't know it even had! Though we never went over ¾ on the temp gauge, we were down to about 20 miles an hour by the time we reach the top. I found out later that there's an 11 percent grade near the top, which explained a lot, but still, I started thinking about how we could lessen the weight in the trailer, since that really made me worried about some other mountains we were going to have to climb this summer. Anyway, Christine at Circle E had told me she would stick around for us, so I texted her to say we would be a few minutes late, and, in fact, we arrived at 1:05, but she had already locked up and left! The owner was sitting on a golf cart outside the door, and unlocked the office to let me in, but then told me he didn't know how to register me or use the computer, so we kind of looked at each other for a few minutes, when Christine arrived. Not quite sure why she didn't wait for me like she said she would, but never mind. She got us logged in, spent what seemed like an inordinate amount of time explaining what I should do if I got lost on the trail, then we finally went on our way to our site. Well, that was interesting. The map showed our site backing to the left, meaning we should just be able to drive by it and back in easily enough. When we got there, though, it actually went to the right, and there was a big tree by the side of the road across from it, making it nearly impossible to back it in like that. If we just pulled straight in, the hookups would be on the wrong side. So we ended up having to go around the loop in order to come in from the other side, which was a tiny road with lots of trees along it. I managed to make the corner, but then the back tire of the trailer got caught up on a stump that was right on the corner. I had to back up and take another run at it. Fortunately, the stump was fairly rotten and with a little extra oomph I was able to drive right over it. Once we made it into our site, we realized how sloped it was, with the truck end much higher than the trailer end. That made my already steep ramp even steeper, and Flash literally knocked me over coming down the ramp. Apollo was better, but still, it was pretty dangerous. After I got them settled into their stalls (no highlining here, darn it!), we came back to disconnect the truck. Even without using any blocks under the jacks, and even with the jacks all the way down to the ground, we still weren't level! What the heck?! This is going to be a challenge! Not to be deterred, and too exhausted to care, and we still had to dialyze this afternoon, we just went about our business getting set up, got Hubby on his machine and crashed as best as possible this afternoon. But the important thing is, WE'RE BACK ON THE ROAD, AWAY FROM THE HOUSE!!! YAY!!!!
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