Hiya Darlin’,
As expected, a very busy day! Even more so than I had anticipated. Got up before dawn, successfully managed to leave just before 7:00, drove first to the Walmart to do most of my shopping, though I couldn’t get my perishables or frozen stuff this early. I also discovered I can’t buy wine before 9:00, though I don’t know why when all the local laws seem to say 7:00 is fine. Whatever. Got to the barn by 9:10, got saddled up and ready to go, and we were out before 10:00. Rode with Bettina and Amber, though Joanna was supposed to join us she pulled out at the last minute. It was a lovely ride! Just under 12 miles through some delightful grasslands, and even some water was still on the trails, amazing! We stopped for lunch at a pavilion right by a lake with an observation dock, and no sooner than we started eating lunch than a rain storm came in. I stripped down Flash quickly (there was a lovely little paddock we were able to put the horses in during lunch), though the other girls waited a bit, hoping it would pass quickly, but it actually started pouring down harder, so they eventually ran out and took their tack off as well. Then a park truck came by with both an outgoing and an incoming park manager, so many things were discussed about how to make the park more equestrian-friendly. A very productive meeting, actually! After lunch, we saddled back up and headed down a different trail, this one taking us to a body of water that we ended up trotting on, so my lower legs and boots ended up getting soaked, but it was fun! Nice firm ground, but with about a foot of water, and Flash wasn’t about to not keep up with the crowd, so we barreled on through! We got back to the barn about 2:30, having made really good time throughout the day, with lots of fast gaiting and cantering. While I hoped to meet up with Glenn, for a bit there it didn’t look like it was going to happen, but in the end, they cut back on their errands and ended up meeting me at Miller’s Ale House in Jensen Beach. Enjoyed some fish and chips and a couple of Guinness drafts, which are always my first choice of beverage when I can get it. After a nice visit with them, I headed out to another Walmart to get my perishables and wine, then got back to camp just before 7:00. After putting my horse away and feeding them both, as well as putting my groceries away, I did my rounds. It was really busy because there’s a hog hunt starting tomorrow, the last of the season, so we had a crowd. Took me awhile to get everybody checked in, then I chatted with the horse folks for awhile, then went back a checked a couple of more folks in that had snuck in while I was in the barn, but finally I came back to the trailer for awhile. Because of the crowd I checked the gate and 10, and stayed up until past eleven so I could make sure all the generators and noise were quiet. So a VERY long day, I hope to sleep in late tomorrow!. Good night, my sweet! Love you!

Hi Sweetie,
Well, a bit of a change of pace today, at last! After chores, I hooked up the little horse trailer and hauled Flash out to another SFWMD property just north of Indiantown, and coincidentally, just a mile or so up the road from the new house brother Glenn bought and is renovating. Small world! I didn’t actually go to the right gate, I just went to the first one I came to, Gate 9, though I didn’t realize it was wrong until I was on the trail and my GPS had me in a different place than where I thought I was supposed to be. Didn’t matter, though, the trail took by right by the correct parking lot, which turned out to be a very nice picnic area with a water trough (I don’t think the pump is working, though I didn’t check). This is mostly used as leased out grazing land, so we ran into a couple of herds of cows out here, with lots of babies. Most of it was fairly open, though a lot of it was along canals, which was a relief for Lola, who I decided had to come. She’s had so little exercise lately, she keeps getting into trouble, so I had to tire her out. I made a mistake along one canal, a poorly marked intersection that didn’t clearly indicate I had to got THROUGH a gate to stay on the trail, and I ended up going about half a mile on the wrong side of a canal, and when my GPS said the trail turned right, I couldn’t because the canal was in the way. So, I had to go back, go through the gate, follow that until I DID come to where I could turn right. There was one really nice section though, right through a literal jungle, and it was a good 8-10 degrees cooler in there! I really wish there was room for more trails in there, it was lovely, but was only a small section of the trail. We did eleven miles in all, so it was a good ride, and we had some wonderful long stretches of grass where we got a good canter in. We were out less than three hours, so we made good time as well, though of course the 25 minute drive added to it. Glad to have a change of venue, though, nice to be on some NEW trails! Nice day today, too, only got up to the lower 80’s with a nice breeze. Gotta take advantage of these kind of days since it’s getting hotter every day! Then, unfortunately, I spent most of the evening on the phone bouncing between Verizon, Google and Samsung, STILL haven’t resolved the issue of my missing contact information! I MIGHT be getting closer, but it’s hard to say at this point. Anyway, time for shower and bed, hopefully I’ll get some sleep, I’m so hyped up about all this phone stuff, really makes me mad! Time to do some meditation! Good night, babe! Love you!

Hi Sweetie,
After a good night sleep, chores and breakfast, I saddled up Flash to double-check on a couple of trails that I apparently haven’t done lately, just to make sure I’m putting intersection numbers in the right places. I did find one intersection I had to add, but managed to get it straightened out fairly easily. I suspect there will be other changes once I get out there putting posts in, whenever that happens. Flash was brilliant, though we got off to a later start than I wanted because his hooves have grown uncharacteristically fast these last couple of months, and he had a big chip off on one side, so I went ahead and trimmed them down nice and short, so that should keep it for awhile. Nevertheless, we still managed to get out just after 10:00 and were back before noon, before it got too warm. A decent breeze today, and then, finally, around 2:00, it thankfully started to rain, first a little passing shower, then later a fairly steady rain for a bit, so everything already looks a little greener. I still love a rainy Sunday! Watched some more Supernaturals, my latest binge-watch, then after dinner watched a movie you would have enjoyed, a pre-WWII political espionage thriller called Munich, Edge of War with Jeremy Irons. It tried to make out that Neville Chamberlain was actually a hero rather than an appeaser, which I’m sure you would have disagreed with, but it was an interesting take on it nonetheless. Anyway, time for shower and bed! Good night, sweetie! Love you!

Hi Darlin’,
Another good night sleep, woke up a few minutes before my alarm, did chores, had breakfast, and then got Flash saddled just in time to a ride with Lynda and two of her friends. We did the green trail and part of the yellow trail, and even with all the time I’ve spent out there, I still got turned around a time or two. Dang, do we need signage! All three women were convinced they would have gotten lost without a guide, and I believe it! Even with the fresh markings, unless you know where the trail started, you’d never find it. Anyway, it was a lovely ride, not too hot and with a nice breeze, and we got back to camp by about 11:30, so just the right length for them. Did pretty much nothing else for the rest of the day, binge-watching TV. We a good and much appreciated storm, dropped quite a bit of rain, which we need really badly. When I checked the forecast this morning there was a couple of days of rain in the next ten days, then when I checked it during the storm, it’s been changed to rain every day for the next week! Who knows what will actually transpire! So a lazy day after our ride, I ate too much and sat around too much. We had one little bit of excitement, the sheriff’s office came out to settle a domestic squabble in one of the campsites, a woman whose boyfriend wouldn’t take her back home to Pennsylvania, not sure what it was all about, but they ended up leaving together. Anyway, it’s a quiet day, which is fine, and a quiet evening, too, but now I’m ready for shower and bed. Good night, babe! Love you!

Hey Darlin’,
Had a good night sleep, not surprising after spending five hours in the saddle yesterday! Tried to get out earlier today, but kept getting bogged down because my Garmin kept truncating my routes again, don’t know what’s up with that! Tried to erase a bunch of stuff, but it just keeps popping back in on me, don’t know why, but I had enough to get the job done eventually. So it was 10:30 by the time Flash and I hit the trail. Turns out he was very patient with me, at least until the very end when we were heading back to camp, and we managed to get nearly 14 miles done in the same time it took Apollo and I to do a little over 10 1/2 yesterday. Not surprising, but was glad we managed to get it done. So the white trail is finished and the yellow trail still has about a half mile because I ran out of paint, but it’s not too far out of camp so I can get it finished as soon as I get some more paint. I also need to do the red trail, I noticed that has a lot of fading paint as well. Part of the problem is that most of the trees being painted are pines, and the bark tends to peel off, and the paint goes with it. This spray paint doesn’t stand out very well, but it’s the best I can do until I can get a UTV so I can take canned paint with brushes and rollers. I’m definitely finding all the places that have to have posts, though, so that’s a plus. So another long day, then had dinner and settled down for the evening, already did my gate check, now it’s just time for shower and bed! Good night, babe! Love you!

Hiya Babe,
Had a pretty good night sleep, though I ended up waking early, then went back to sleep and slept too late. One the campers stopped by before he left and was outside my window so we chatted for a few minutes before he left and I got up. Did my chores and a walkaround, found one pair of tenters that came in late and were only here for the night, no biggie. Finally started getting Apollo ready for our trail marking ride today, but his hooves had grown so much since they were trimmed in February that I had to take the time to trim him. He had on section that had bent back to bad I had to clip it off sideways, but he was a trooper about it. I think he was happy to be going for a ride at first, but I’m not sure he was as happy by the time we got to mile ten! It was longer than I thought, and with all the stop starting, and pushing him into bushes and brambles to get close enough to a tree to paint it, but he was incredibly patient! What a great horse! We only averaged about 1.7 miles an hour, so we were out over five hours, and considering we didn’t get on the trail until 11:30, it was about 5:00 by the time he was put back into his paddock. A beautiful day, though, cooler temps and a pretty stiff breeze kept it comfortable. I managed to get almost the entire yellow trail done, except for some reason by GPS truncated the map I put on it, and the most confusing part of the trail wasn’t on there, so I’m going to have to go back and finish the last half a mile, if I have enough paint! Just about ran out of yellow, may have to get some more to finish it. Tomorrow my plan is to do the white trail, but I’ll have to take Flash since it’s a longer ride, and he’s not likely to be as patient, but we’ll see! Several campers left today, so it’s a bit quieter here, though I think James put law enforcement on alert with the problems I’ve been having with this one camper who has no consideration for his neighbors. Hope it doesn’t come to that, but who knows? Anyway, time for my last check on the gate, then my shower, make the bed since I did a little laundry tonight, and off to sleepland! Love you, sweetie! Good night!

Hiya Babe!
A great night sleep, a beautiful morning, so after chores and breakfast I saddled Flash to go for a quick ride before the heat and forecasted rain came in. I’ve been doing some more double-checking on those three areas of the trails that have been mis-mowed, and made a very detailed map so that I could once and for all make sure my temp markers were in the right place, so I downloaded that onto my GPS and we headed out. It was fairly short, less than 7 miles, but I did need to change a few markers bases on my findings, and even found ANOTHER spot that had been mis-mowed since 2020, but in a place where it really didn’t make any difference, and has since been permanently marked, so it’s not really worth changing it back. Glad I did it though, I have more confidence that I can lead the mowers to the ride place when we finally do that. I’ve offered to mow it myself with my own tractor and bush hog, but we’re still waiting for the answer to that, though the powers-that-be seem to more inclined to just have me go out with the contracted mower guys and show them the way. Whatever, as long as it gets done, I don’t care how we do it. I spent a little time putting some things away, but otherwise had a lazy afternoon, other than my usual rounds. The sisters camping across from me sound some rosary pea plants right between a couple of trees next to the paddocks, so I cordoned them off with some survey tape so I can show them to the volunteers on work day so they know what we’re trying to clear out. Apparently, the seeds are extremely poisonous to horses, so obviously we want to clear them out of here, along with some poison ivy that was found during the last work day. At 9:00, I got a call from Anita, the OTL folks had a meeting tonight about several things, not the least of which was getting me a reimbursement for my fuel, and although it was apparently a huge battle, our side finally won and they are going to be paying me after all, yay. They also got a new treasurer, can’t wait to hear what she finds out about how the books have been run during the previous guy’s tenure. He was apparently adamant again paying me, but he lost in the end. A bit of good news, at least. Took my final walk to check that the gate was locked, now it’s time for shower and bed! Good night, sweetie! Love you!

Hiya Babe!
Well, what an exciting and nail-biting adventure it’s been since yesterday morning! It all started out quite ordinary, with chores and breakfast, and several conversations with incoming campers before I was finally able to saddle up Flash and get him loaded in the trailer for our trip down to the Cypress Boardwalk. Today’s ride was going to be just about the final thread in the tapestry of our map, where I would GPS the eastern part of the orange OTL Hiking trail. Not surprisingly, it was considerably off from where the map said it was supposed to be, but it was close enough and well-marked enough where we didn’t have a problem following it. I’ve only seen it from the other end where it comes out at the border between Dupuis and Corbett, so it was nice to see it coming from the other way. Many parts of it were quite lovely and thick, with some open fields as well, and it was very enjoyable. Flash was brilliant, and after not being ridden for a few days, he was ready for a nice ride. The temps had cooled down the night before, so even though the humidity was high, there was a nice breeze and it was quite nice. We came back along mostly on firebreak type connectors just to verify their existence, and we covered a lot of ground, sixteen miles in all. We drove back to camp, arriving just after 3:30, got him rinsed off and put away, then puttered around for a bit. I had asked Steve over to share dinner, so I started to get that ready. Then one of the group campers came over and reported that one of their group had gone out for a short ride at about 1:00 and was overdue to come back to join them for a second rider at 4:00. We discussed it for a bit, but decided we needed to wait a bit longer before calling in the authorities. Their group saddled up and went out looking for her, but came back empty-handed. Finally, after we had dinner, at about 6:15 or so, Steve called Dillan, our local law enforcement guy, and he started us on the path to getting help. Within minutes we had half a dozen Martin County Sheriff’s cars in front of us. Just before they arrived, one of the women of the group discovered the lost rider had called her and left a message at 3:40 p.m., that she was lost, her phone was dying, so at least we knew she was okay up to that point. Before long, they had called in air support, i.e. a helicopter, to see if they could locate the woman, Brigette. It got dark. Not long after that FWC arrived with UTV’s and ATV’s, and they began scouring the area as well. This went on for hours. The Palm Beach Sheriff’s office sent THEIR helicopter too, both using thermal imaging, but with no luck at all. This went on into the night until after 3:00 in the morning, with the helo’s each refueling several times. Finally, after 3:30, everyone left to get ready for an all-out search in the morning. I had arranged with the other equestrian campers to have an organized posse go out to look for her starting at 7:30. I finally crawled into bed on top of my bedding, fully clothed, set my alarm for 6:00, and thankfully, managed to fall asleep. Those two hours were a great power nap, though, and when the alarm went off, I got up, fed the horses, had breakfast, got Flash saddled up and was ready by 7:15. Most of the group was close to being ready, so we gathered together and I assigned everyone a different trail to check. Just as we were breaking up, for them to finish saddling and for me to leave, we got word that they had likely found her, yet to be confirmed (but how many lost horses and riders were out there?), so we waited. As it turned out, it was her, she had traveled from the west side of the property to the east side, and evidently ran circles in between, ending up along the Powerline Grade where we finally arranged for me to put Flash away and go out with my little horse trailer and pick her up. She seemed to be no worse for the wear, had even managed to get a few hours sleep out there with her horse standing motionless beside her. Even though she reckoned the helos were looking for her, and she tried a couple of times to flag them down, they never spotted her! One of the ladies had packed her a sandwich and drinks, and one of the men came with me because he had an Apple phone, as did the detective that had her coordinates, and leave it to Apple, he couldn’t pass it onto my Android! But it was good, in case I needed have help getting the horse in the trailer, though a couple of ladies in the group said this horse (who we finally learned his name was Moonshine) didn’t have a problem loading in. We drove over and finally found the wayward woman, who seemed perfectly fine, though thoroughly embarrassed for causing such a ruckus. The cops took her to Gate 1 where the paramedics were waiting to check her out (though she insisted she didn’t need or want it), and we carried on to get her horse back to the barn, which a couple of folks from the group had readied the night before. The horse loaded fine, and unloaded fine, and dug into his hay bag the minute he went through the stall to the paddock. So a very happy ending to this saga, thank goodness! All the authorities cleared out, and things quickly quieted down in camp. Brigitte no doubt rested, the rest of the group (who had gotten more sleep) went out for a ride, and I stripped down and crawled into bed for another two hour power nap. After getting up, I tackled the job of trying to find the slow leak in my trailer tire, and after filling up the tire using one of the group’s compressors (both of mine are dead now), I finally discovered it was the valve stem, at the bottom where the rubber goes into the rim. Being Saturday, the tire shops in Indiantown were closed, so it will have to wait. The group had invited me to dinner, so after another walk around to see if anyone else came in (they hadn’t), and a conversation with Steve about the upcoming hand-over (which I asked to be delayed until tomorrow after a good night sleep would return some semblance of wits to me), I fed the horses and joined the group for dinner. We all learned some valuable lessons with this adventure. Though I carry saddlebags with me on just about every ride, with a first aid kit, thermal blanket, rain gear, etc., I realized that I don’t have a flashlight, or anything that could act as a strobe, which would be extremely valuable for catching the attention of a helicopter pilot. I might consider a small solar charger for my phone as well, since Brigitte’s phone died right after she made the call to her friend, so we couldn’t use it to triangulate her position. Otherwise, I think I’m pretty well set, though I’m sure the rest of the group is going to be adding to their saddle bags! They were all very complimentary about how we all handled the situation, but it was the least we could do. Part of the job, I guess, though Steve said he’s never had a rider get that lost before. I have to say, though, it will play out well with my ongoing proposal for better trail markings! James just had a meeting with them earlier this week and they were reluctant to put up intersection signs because of the maintenance issues, but this episode might just trump their concerns. We’ll at least try to use it for a bit of leverage, fingers crossed! After dinner, just for fun, I did my Snowy River to earn my meal, chatted for a bit, then finally came back to the trailer. I diverted long enough to blanket the horses, because the weather has changed dramatically, with temps going down to near 45 tonight, would you believe! By now, the horses have lost their winter coat, and Apollo’s summer coat is not even completely grown, so they’re going to need those blankets tonight! Finally took a long overdue hot shower, now I’m just about ready to head to bed, exhausted, but satisfied with the Happy Ending we all love so much! Time for bed! Love you, sweetie! Good night!