After two days of pretty much solid, cold rain, it finally started to clear up today, and as much as we’d like to take a ride, we had some running around to do, most particularly to try to find hay for this increasingly finicky mare of ours. I’m beginning to think a trip to the vet might be the only option. She has no trouble eating horse feed or grass, but she just turns her nose up at hay, no matter what kind it is. Today didn’t help. We drove over 30 miles round trip to pick up a couple of bales of hay at a farm south in Cayuta, but she ended up turning her nose up at that, too. Even the nearly pure alfalfa is being stomped on by her. In addition, when I went to turn on my computer this morning, it refused to boot up! Perfect! I found a computer repair shop in town and dropped it off there before heading out to the farm, then we went to Walmart to shop, and Tops for gas, plus I ran Lola into a vet next door that happened to conveniently have a scale in the lobby, and she weighed in at 59 pounds, the same as a few weeks ago. Guess I need to pump up her feed again! Got some puppy food at Walmart, maybe that will help. Got a call from the computer repair guy, it seems the ram slot went bad, but they moved it to a second slot and all is well (thank goodness!), with a warning that it’s an indication the motherboard might be on it’s way out. Well, it’s been since Spring 2011 since I bought my last computer, so I guess I’m due. Time to research what’s available again! Didn’t get back to camp until after 5, did the unsuccessful hay test, did some training with Lola before having a late dinner and watching a movie before bed!

Getting up early again, we headed first to the office to pay for the night, but after expressing our disappointment, they waived the fee in lieu of me writing a commentary on how they could improve the horse camp, which I did. From there, we headed toward Watkins Glen, stopping once for fuel and again for liquor, before making our way out to Sugar Hill. One of the reasons we headed here early is because we were concerned that with July 4th falling on a Saturday, that some folks might arrive this weekend and stay for the week, and we wanted to be sure to get our “usual” spot, which was a well graveled spot with a water spigot at one end, and an angle which would allow Hubby to get his satellite signal. In addition, there was zero cell signal at Alleghany, and we knew we had one here, and were thrilled to discover the signal had even improved since the last time we were here, so all is good, all around!! It didn’t take long to get the horses on anchors, water in the tank (which was confirmed!), and completely settled into this free campground. There were some new horse stalls built as well, so we decided that rather than high line, we would put them in the covered stalls at night and let them graze on their anchors during the day. We met up with maintenance man Ron, the same one who was here the last time we were here, and a new assistant ranger named Creighton, who issued a camping permit through July 6. We soon settled down for the day, while numerous campers came into the camp, making us even more glad we came early, though time will tell if they’re just here for the weekend or for the entire week. Having got all that we wanted here, we’re happy campers today!

After a delightful day yesterday, today we slept late and spent the day simply getting ready to leave tomorrow. Hubby and I took a short walk down to the other campground, which he hadn’t seen yet, and frolicked with the dogs a bit, but otherwise had a fairly easy day.

Being near Cleveland, the home of an old high school buddy of mine, we arranged to meet at the horse camp today, though we crossed paths in the nearby town of Ravenna and hooked up so I could show her the way. I had been doing some shopping, getting fuel and horse feed, and we arrived at camp by 12:30, after I made a side trip to the camp office to pay for two more days here. Today was the first decent weather we’ve had in more than a week, and we were happy to see the sunshine. We visited for awhile, then saddled up and hit the road, this time staying on the road because of her inexperience as a rider. Had a good time nevertheless, chatting the whole way. The dogs accompanied us, and other than getting a warning that dogs should be on a leash from a passing ranger (despite the fact there wasn’t anyone around and there was no one to complain), we got back to camp, fixed some late lunch and chatted some more, catching up on times old and new, making arrangements to meet up again, before she finally dodged out just a new storm began dropping rain on us. We are getting sick of all this rain! What a wet spring and summer they seem to be having up here. Well, not just up here, we had plenty along the Gulf Coast and in Texas as well! Hoping it gets drier as the summer progress, though I have to say, I can’t remember seeing so much green, which is a welcome respite afte nearly two years out west, where everything is brown, brown, brown (except the blue bonnets at Muleshoe Bend, of course!) Looking forward to getting to NY state in a few days!

Woke up several times during the night with the sound of rain on the roof, and it was quite steady from about 7 to 9, so it seems that unless it clears up this afternoon, our ride day is off, darn it! After checking the forecast again, there’s a huge blob of rain heading this way, so I got out one of our portable barrels and put it by the awning to collect water, and after feeding the horses their rations, put them back on their anchors so they can keep munching on the grass and clover here. Not much else likely to happen today, with all the rain. Several people walked by, and apparently did a few landscaping chores, obviously part of the group down below, though we only saw a couple of horse trailers come in yesterday, so they aren’t exactly taking up the whole camp. Whatever, we’re happy up here now that we’re almost level, and it did look awful soggy down there, probably worse now with all the additional rain since yesterday. Took a walk to try to find the short trail next to the campground I’ve seen on the map, with the dogs along, though I lost Lola within 10 minutes, and was relieved when I discovered she had gone straight back to camp. Struggled with some really slippery mud, and apparently I had misremembered how long the loop was (I thought it was ¾ of a mile, turned out to be twice that), so it was more than 1 ½ hours before I got back, wet and muddy for my troubles. Little Billy stayed with me the whole way, though, what a trooper! I never would have found the north trailhead on horseback, as it was invisible where it comes out on the utility easement, so I’m glad I made the reconnoiter. Cleaned up, then settled down to an evening of dinner and watching TV.

A quick bowl of cereal, final payment of the bill, stowing of hay, and we were off before 8:30, hoping against hope that we could avoid rain today. It’s been so rainy almost everyday, and while it is thankfully much cooler up here than it was at Deam Lake, the rain has made everything damp, and lots of fields around here have standing water in them. Though it was misty and cloudy, we managed to stay dry most of the day. Rather than taking the expensive and crowded toll road east, we decided to take a southern route, a bit longer but much more pleasant, breaking at regular intervals to eat, get fuel and propane, walk the dogs and so on, until we arrived in the area of the state park around 3:00. My GPS took me to the wrong place, and there was terrible signage, so we had to park and call to find out directions, which we finally got. Then I missed a turn and had to go a couple of miles out of my way to find a place to turn around. We finally made it to the office, where a new girl had no clue how to register me without a reservation, so she had to get help. The older woman wasn’t a lot better, in the end having to call the park manager on instructions of what to do! Then we discovered that despite what their website says, there is no water, heavily ironed or otherwise at the horse camp, which was going to make things a bit more dicey. We went down to the dump station area and filled up with fresh water, including some in the horse tank so we would have enough for at least a day or two. Then we took the long, narrow road down to the horse camp, discovering that very few sites offered a good shot at a satellite signal, and those were on a slope that would require us to unhook if we had a hope of getting level, which was also necessary because the sites were so short we couldn’t stay hooked up anyway without blocking the road. There were a few sites that were level, but with all the rain, they were super-soggy, plus didn’t have a shot at a satellite signal, so we did the best we could. Unfortunately, we were so worried about being level front to back, we didn’t really take notice of side-to-side until we hooked up, then we realized we were at a definite list to the left. By this time, it was nearly 6:00, so we decided not to mess with it anymore tonight, as Hubby wanted to get the satellite dish up. While this usually doesn’t take much time, for some reason we could never get power from the receiver to the satellite dish, something that usually only takes hooking up the coaxial cable, but for some reason, the power wasn’t getting through. We messed around with THAT for more than an hour, until a thunderstorm came in and we gave up for the time being. I fixed dinner for us and the dogs (who had spent several hours exploring), and afterwards got the horses put away on the cable high lines they have here (they were on their anchors, happily munching nice green grass and clover), before we finally settled down for a movie on DVR. As it was raining pretty steadily, I put some buckets under several of the RV’s gutters, figuring that might solve the horse water problem, at least! Considering there’s rain in the forecast every day while we’re here, it may be all we need. Bed by ten!

Had to get up at the crack of dawn today, in order to get to Open Range early enough for them to hopefully complete the work today. Arrived at 7:15, was met by Joe, who was a very cheerful guy, who walked us through all the work we had agreed upon. Once we disconnected the truck and parked it, Hubby and I hopped into the van and headed up the road a half block to a nice little Amish cafe for breakfast. Shipshewana is so Amish it’s a tourist attraction, we saw dozens of horse and carriages along the road throughout the day. We went to a feed store on the same road and found some weight builder for Clio, who seems to be holding steady on her weight, but too thin for our liking. She’s lost a lot of her top line, and her hips seem a bit caved in. The store expert agreed with me that it was more muscle loss than anything, so he hooked us up with some stuff that he said would address that, rather than just a high calorie, high fat supplement. Drove out to a Walmart in a nearby town, considered going to a movie to kill the afternoon but decided against it because they all were too long and wouldn’t get us back to the RV place in time, so we just drove back to Shipshewana. For some reason, the dogs’ leashes were left in my truck, so I rescued those and took the dogs for a quick walk outside the repair shop. Then we spoke to Bill, and he checked on the progress and said it would be done in about 45 minutes, so we just hung around talking with some other folks for a while. In the end, they fixed a lot of stuff that we hadn’t talked about, but did it as though it was under warranty, for which we were very grateful. In addition to fixing the panel that had been creamed when a tire blew, they put a new motor in the slide where the desk is, instead of putting a new switch in the power jack (which had just quit working a couple of days ago) they put in a whole new jack, and instead of just putting a new bracket on the paddle fan (which also just went a couple of days ago, and which we’ve replaced several times before), they put in a whole new paddle fan. Unfortunately, when they went to close up the slides, they didn’t stop to make sure the blades were clear (a flaw they’ve apparently fixed on later models), so they ended up breaking the fan bracket again, and had to replace it entirely again! I had also hoped they could fix my bathroom fan, the sensor had quit working and it wouldn’t go up except manually, so they replaced the fan and the switch entirely, though they didn’t put in a rain sensor type like I had, it was just a plain raise/lower, off/on setup. Too bad, I liked the rain sensor one, when it was working. They ran out of time for fixing the digital antenna that we broke off last year near Fort Robinson, NE, but they sold us one that I suppose we’ll be able to install easily enough. Anyway, a lot got done, and the unit looks great, and we didn’t pay for hardly anything beyond the initial repair estimate, so we were happy. Hooked up and got back to Circle J by about 5:30, deciding not to bother with electric tonight so we could leave the electrical cords stowed. Bill came around to collect on the bill, but we had a small dispute about how much it was supposed to be (I had written evidence, so in the end, he agreed with my numbers), plus I wanted to buy 5 bales of their hay, which was quite nice, and which Clio seemed at least halfway interested in. Finally settled down after a long and tiring day, setting the alarm for a bit later. Another long drive tomorrow, but with the days as long as they are now, no sense in getting up at the crack of dawn again!

Indeed, we did get a day of rest today, though for some reason, I didn’t sleep very well, waking up several times through the night. Nevertheless, we relaxed most of the day, and I even walked down to the river with my fishing equipment and the dogs, and spent awhile down there, catching just one fish, not enough for dinner, so I let it go. A quiet evening as well.