Archives for November 2018

Got a nice early start today, took an hour less to get ready since I didn't have to load the trailer, then move, then unload the trailer, then load the horses, the load the trailer again, like I had to do at Coldwater, so things went a lot faster. We were out by about 8:30, and since we had had a sewer hook-up, we didn't even have to make a dump stop. We dropped a Fedex box at the office, as I had made arrangements for a pickup here today, with labs that are essential for Hubby to get an in-center dialysis session next week on our business trip to Nebraska. Things were going great until I got a phone call from Fedex wanting to know where in the campground we were located because they couldn't go searching all over for us to pick up the package. I called them and learned they were trying to find us at Wolf Creek Campground in southern Illinois! Evidently, all of the information about being at McCulley Farms was completely ignored, they just went back to an address we had used ONCE about 10 MONTHS AGO!! How stupid can you get??? I argued with them for a long time, explaining that this was literally and truly a matter of life and death, and they said they would "try" to get the driver to go back and get the package. They wanted me to meet the driver at a Flying J 15 minutes from McCulley Farms (we were already 100 miles from there), and it only got worse from there. After we had gone through the Ag stop on I-75 south of Lake City, our ETA at our friend Cherryl's horse farm was 12:30, which was spectacular. I had planned on arriving early, doing some socializing to get caught up, and then dialyzing Hubby this afternoon. But you know how it is with the best-laid plans! We were only about an hour or so from our desitnation in Dade City when I suddenly felt something change in the feel of my truck. I suddenly had no power steering, no brakes, and my battery light came, which I realized meant my serpentine belt had given way, darn it! Fortunately there was an exit a half mile away, with a mechanic shop just on the other side of the overpass, so I parked along the exit ramp and walked over. They managed to drive it over, checked it out, ordered the part, tried to talk me into a bunch of other stuff, and charged me $250 to change the belt, including $35 for "shop supplies," $94 for a belt my mechanic says costs about $40, and charged me more than an hour of labor @ $130/hour, even though it only took about 10 minutes to do the job. What can I say, we were a captive audience with no place else to go, darn it. That episode set us back a couple of hours, but we managed to get on the road and still get to Cherryl's by around 2:30, with me still arguing with Fedex almost the entire way. What is it with them? Why can't they just say YES and be good at customer service, rather than NO, NO, NO and making enemies? Again, mostly captive audience, I guess. In the end, they promised to get the package picked up today, and eventually left me a voice mail saying they had, so I guess the labs are on the way. After getting set up and the horses settled in, plus a bit of catching up, it was too late to dialyze Hubby today (and I was a bit too irritated to focus after all the crap that happened). Our hosts fed us a spectacular meal, which went a long way to assuage my stress, and we finally settled in for the evening before heading to bed in this quiet, and (finally) dark place!

Thought we'd be waking up to cold and clear skies, but it was still cloudy when we got up at dawn. It took us quite a while to get everything packed up, it's a lot of work when you're on your own like I am now. Hubby's just not strong enough to help much, though he did assist in getting the truck hooked up. We didn't have any trouble getting the horses loaded, though the ramp was a bit slippery and they both slid a bit on the way up. On my list of things to do is to try to solve that problem. We headed for the dump and managed to clear out the gray water in the front tank, but discovered that the second hookup for the gray and blackwater from the bathroom had a very strange setup and no connections to make it work. The previous owner of the trailer had given me a huge plastic bag full of hoses and adapters, but none of them actually worked with the setup that was on there. Weird! Anyway, we opted to just travel that way, and would solve the problem when we got to McCulley Farms, where we hoped to get a sewer hookup, and thus have the chance to fix the problem. Once we got out of the campground, we had an uneventful drive to Jasper, FL, though we did have to stop once for gas at the only diesel station in town, so naturally it was 50 cents more a gallon than everywhere else. One thing that we saw on the trip were a lot of downed trees along I-10 from Hurricane Michael, which came through the panhandle a few weeks ago. Even though it was pretty far inland, there were whole forests that had been decapitated, with 12-15 foot high stumps just broken off. It was obvious from the many crushed guardrails just how many trees had come down, and there were work crews all along the way. Plenty more work to be done, no doubt! We arrived at McCulley Farms around 4:00, (having lost an hour from changing time zones), and met up with owner Richard, who was happy to let us have a sewer site at no extra charge. We found a great spot out in the open, though it was quite a walk to the stalls again. Unfortunately the stalls aren't in that great shape, none of them have latches so I had to use their lead ropes to tie them shut. Mostly metal gates chained onto half-fast posts, and a lot of the boards that make up the other walls look like they'd been kicked, broken and repaired more than once. A bit disappointing considering the fairly expensive price tag to come here. Can't wait till we can actually just high-line them nearby! Anyway, we got ourselves hooked up, and I spent a little time sorting out the sewer problem, managed to take an end off an old split pipe and put it on the end of the attachment to the drain. I have to say, as many wonderful attributes as this trailer has, the plumbing system is NOT one of them. Discreetly hidden behind a couple of compartment doors, which open at about a 45 degree angle to the ground, when you open the door they're in your way, and the actual fitting for the hose is way inside that compartment! You can't actually see it unless you're on the ground looking up. The previous owners had added a short piece of hose to make it more accessible, but the end doesn't fit the typical drain hose, which was my problem. Anyway, I got it fixed up so that it was usable, at least temporarily, because the hose end doesn't fit exactly right, but I can solve that problem later. I drained the black water and rinsed with the gray water, then set it up to use for our stay. That all done, we relaxed for the evening after getting the horses settled in.