Hi Sweetie,
Well, I certainly got my rest last night! Was in bed around 9:30 last night, and didn’t get out of bed until 9:30 this morning! Read some, but mostly it was sleeping, so I woke up refreshed and raring to go this morning! Got all my chores done, did some computer work, like re-writing the OTL Mail-in registration form, while I waited it for it warm up, because frankly, it was too cold to ride this morning, but the sun finally broke through the gray clouds and that did the trick! Saddled up Flash and headed out on a GPS-planned route, that started out absolutely lovely. Then we ran into a Cypress swamp and couldn’t figure out where to go, so we backtracked a bit and took another route. Some trails were gorgeous, and then I’d run into difficulties, like too much water, a barb-wire fence, downed trees and not matching up with my GPS. We didn’t get anywhere near as far south as I wanted because I couldn’t find an opening in a barb-wire fence, so I went back up north and did some more exploring up there. A lot of wide open spaces that really got Flash’s juices going, he was galloping for all he was worth across some fields. Managed to find the other side of the cypress swamp, though, and saw which way we should have gone, just missed it, but it was over a lot of dark water, and couldn’t see the trail on the other side. Got over it though, that’s the important thing. We ended up doing about 8.75 miles, less than we wanted, but it’s a start. We’ll try again tomorrow when it’s warmer, to see what we can find. Once I sponged Flash down and put him away, I did a few chores, like repaired the hose that runs out of the water tank, it had such a bad kink it wouldn’t flow, so I cut that section out and put a connector on it. Put the propane tanks away, filled the horses’ water tanks, just puttered for a bit. Finally reached dinner time, so I fed the horses and myself, put their light blankets on since it’s going down into the low 40’s tonight, and settled down for the evening to a couple of episodes of The Expanse. Got a message from your niece that your sister has been transferred to a home, she’s been having trouble getting out of bed, so they’re working on helping her do that. She had knee surgery awhile back and is having trouble with her recovery. I’ve called her a few times these last few weeks, I’ll do so again over the holidays. Anyway, I’m ready to hit the showers and to get to bed early again, I do like these long, leisurely nights in my warm comfy bed! Good night, darlin’! Love you!

Hi Sweetie,
Got a good night sleep, almost got caught up, actually woke up before the alarm! I immediately started a load of laundry, long overdue, the finished my chores and breakfast, doing a second load as well. My little voice in my head told me to put the sheets and whites in the dryer while I was running the generator, which I never do, but I don’t have a lot of clothesline space, so I decided to do that, figuring I could finish it off later this evening when I usually run my generator anyway. Good thing I listened, too, as you’ll soon see! After breakfast I saddled up Apollo to finish off one last bit of trail marking that couldn’t be reached by motorized vehicle. One of the things I love about horses, they’re the original four wheel drive! It was just a short section, just about two miles up and back, but Apollo was happy to get off the highline. He’s been bobbing his head for a couple of days now, obviously bored with standing around, so he was ready to go. We were only out for about 45 minutes though, it’s all I had time for, but he seemed happy for the attention. Since Jo wasn’t coming until almost an hour after we got back, I indulged him with a nice bath, then did a few more chores that I’ve been ignoring the last few days, like putting away feed and putting washer fluid in my truck. Then Jo arrived and we headed out to do a bunch of running around, to pick up signs, put signs out, pick up water barrels, put those out, it was a long day! And to really complicate things, this day that had no rain in the forecast has multiple downpours! Some were really heavy, so you can image what happened to the wash I left on the line! Fortunately, not my sheets, they were still in the dryer, so once I put the generator back on, I finished those off, so I have clean sheets tonight, a few days later than normal, but the best I could do under the circumstances. Anyway, I finally settled down for the evening, heated up some roasted chicken, watch a couple of episodes of Expanse, now I’m headed to an much needed shower and another good night sleep! Good night, babe! Love you!

Hey Babe!
Up at the crack of dawn today, had an appointment to take the truck in this morning and I wanted to be there when they opened at 8:00. Jo was kind enough to pick me up, then she took me to breakfast at a little hole in the wall in town that had great food. Picked up a few things a Publix, including a six-pack of Yeungling’s Hershey Chocolate Porter, couldn’t resist that combination! Filled up two propane bottles, making sure I was stocked up on everything since I thought my truck was going to be out of commission for at least several days, she even said it might be Friday before I get it back. Got back to camp and was soon out riding on Flash to recon the Orange Short loop today. Trails are in good shape, fortunately, drier than I can remember seeing them, but there were still a number of really bad spots that were mud churned up by big tires, so really deep trenches in a few spots. It was clear the ranger was out doing some work today, too, there was a large hole that was filled in and flattened by the time I got there, looking good! Found one more tree down, sent the coordinates to Scottie, so hopefully he can take care of those, too. Got back to camp after 3:30, and just a few minutes later, got a call from the truck shop that my truck was done! Apparently once they dropped out the drive train, they found the U-joints had seized, so they replaced those, plus a support, and that was it! Five hours of labor, but it was well worth it, since the drive home was judder-free! Yay! It was dusk when I got back, fed the horses, and myself, watched less than an hour of TV before tackling the job of finalizing the trails on Google Earth. Turns out it appeared to be a little long (though I have a little conflicting information), so I cut one corner and now it’s as right as I can get it with the tools I have. Hopefully the trail I moved to will be in good condition, we’ll find out in the next day or two! Did some work on the OTL mailing list as well. I’m BUSHED! Had my shower, off to bed forthwith, with another “crack of dawn” morning pending! Good night, sweetie! Love you!

Hey Sweetie!
What a busy day! I spent a lot of time on the phone today, working out some stuff on the OTL for February, then finally got back to focusing on the immediate job of the Goethe Endurance Ride. I planned out a route that I hoped would be good for the first loop of the ride, then saddled up Flash and got out around noon. I was happy with most of the trails, though it’s impossible to avoid every area of deep sand or road or mud or water, I think what I came up with worked pretty well. I did have to change on section completely, it was just too wet, but when making up for it, I found a couple of other lovely trails that will work just fine. I had to finagle a little bit once I got back, but it looks like it will be a good length, too. Once I got Flash settled back in, I got busy working on OTL stuff again, updating the mailing list, getting more people to send me their email addresses, adding some stuff to the Facebook page, trying to figure out how people can pay us online, just a lot of computer work. Barely had time to watch an hour of TV and even then I wasn’t really paying attention. Time slipped away, as it always does when I’m online! Anyway, it’s just about past my bedtime, I still haven’t showered, and I have to get up early in the morning to take my truck into the shop. Busy, but productive! Good night, darlin’! Love you!

Hey Babe,
I had a touch time falling asleep last night, well into the morning before it happened. After chores I had planned to go check out the 15 mile trail, but Kelsey called and said she had some changes to make, so I had to wait for her to do that. Meanwhile, I went back to my water heater problem. I found a local mobile RV whose reviews extolled how helpful he was, so I called him about my problem and he walked me through a couple of things. I had no power to the water heater, so then I backtracked to the circuit board, and discovered that there were three circuits not getting power! The water heater, the AC and the laundry. Sure enough, none were working when I put the generator on. So I knew there was a post problem of some kind, so I went out to the generator and lo and behold, one of the two circuit breakers on the generator had been knocked off! That had never happened before, so it didn’t even occur to me, but thank goodness it was such a simple fix after all! I didn’t look forward to trying to replace the heating element of the circuit board in the water heater, and turns out I didn’t have to! Yay! Once I put everything away it was after noon, so I saddled up Flash, expecting to be going soon, and shortly afterward, Kelsey sent me her new trails. Flash and I headed out to check them out, and the first half of it was really good, a lot of it was what we did last year in reverse, but the second half, honestly, I didn’t like at all. It essentially followed the perimeter fence all along the eastern half of the park, so a lot of it ends up peering into people’s back yards and ranches. Plus I thought the sand was deeper there than in a lot of other places, for much longer, so it didn’t really address that problem at all. Another problem is that parts of it are exactly the same as the earlier loop, so it will be a nightmare trying to mark it so that it won’t be confusing (though it will be!). In the past, we’ve always avoided being on the same trail twice just to avoid the confusion. So now I’m considering revamping the whole thing to streamline it a bit. Met with two of the girls who helped map it to discuss some of the issues, so hopefully there will be no hard feelings when I have to change it. Anyway, it’s now just about past my bedtime, taking my shower (with electric-heated water!) then heading “upstairs” asap! Good night, my darling! Love you!

Hi Honeybunch!
What a day! I can’t believe I slept until 9:30, even though I got to bed at a decent hour last night. What’s up with that? Started out the day by doing a couple of loads of laundry, and once I got those hung out to dry, saddled up Flash to pick off the last trail that I missed on my last ride. We went pretty quickly, and finished off the nearly 7.5 miles in just over 1:40, so we made good time. I really like the section back by the cypress swamp, and most of the rest of it is a nice ride, too, even the prairie part where we got some nice cantering and fast gaiting in. They’ve put a number of water troughs out here at certain points, which is a nice touch, though Flash never wanted to drink out of them. That didn’t stop Lola from jumping into one, though, she was getting hot on the trail, her tongue was flopping around almost as much as her ears! Not sure that’s what the forest folks had in mind when they put those out here, but they certainly served the purpose to cool Lola down! Got back and started packing up for our departure tomorrow, in between posting some more horse camp reviews on the Facebook page. I let the horses out so they could graze whereever they wanted, but next thing I knew, they were back in the paddock, even with the gate wide open! Silly horses! By dinner, everything that could be put away was, and we settled down for the evening for a few more episodes of my new series, The Expanse. Now I’m just about ready for shower and bed! Good night, sweetie! Love you!

Hi Darlin’!
Another good night sleep, our first night on our own as my neighbor left yesterday afternoon. After chores I spent the morning catching up on a couple of months of bookkeeping, then did some overdue housecleaning before finally saddling up Apollo for his ride this week. I wanted to pick off all the rest of the trails today, but somewhere along the line I missed a marker, and thus a large section of trail, so I guess I’ll have to take another ride here and finish them off. Today’s ride was about 6.5 miles, all on dry land, no wading through water today, and Apollo was a bit edgy, no doubt because of all the hog sign out here, lots of torn up trails, but we never saw any. We did see some deer and a lot of birds, but no hogs! I held onto the saddle horn tight, though, since I was worried he would do one of his sudden shifts if he caught anything out of the corner of his eye, and he did wheel around once, but I had no trouble staying on, with me being extra careful. Lola enjoyed the ride, too, of course! We got back before 4:00, so we got an early start to our evening. We had two new neighbors move into the other two campsites, neither of which are horse campers, only spoke long enough for him to introduce his dog on a leash to Lola. One is in an Airstream and the other is in a little trailer that reminded me of our first 19′ Sunline, remember that one? Tiny! Anyway, I finished off the last season of Burn Notice, a really good series that I very much enjoyed, will have to find something new tomorrow. Meanwhile, my busy and productive day is done! Shower and bed are next! Good night, sweetie! Love you!

Hey Sweetie,
Had a good night sleep, got chores and breakfast done, and eventually we all got saddled up for our first ride together. My other neighbors were gone by the time I got up, but I’ll be seeing them again in a couple of weeks. Because Pistol and Doc ride stock horses, I took out Apollo today, and we had about a seven and a half mile ride, making up a loop around most of the northern and central part of the park. It was mostly walking and a little jogging, so not surprisingly, it was a long slow ride, over 2.5 hours, but it was nice. Some areas here are really nice, with huge live oak trees with hanging Spanish moss, quite lovely. After we got back, they went off to the store and out to dinner, and when they got back they got the campfire going and we sat around that for a few hours. I’m sorry to say that I drank too much of that Honey Bourbon (it’s sooo more-ish!) and only got as far as my recliner at 11:00, woke up at 1:00 and barely was able to crawl up into my bed, fully clothed and smelling like smoke, and didn’t wake up again until 9:00 in the morning! I knew when I was buying that stuff that it was like buying a bottle of poison, but hey, it’s a holiday. I just overindulged in a big way, moderation (my usual mantra!) out the window. Oh well, I won’t let that happen again any time soon! Not a bad day, since part of it was on the back of my horse! Love you, babe!