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.

As we have an appointment Wednesday at the Open Range manufacturer to have them do some body work on the RV (we had a tire tread come off and tear up a long section of skirting), I found a place fairly close by that could accommodate us and the horses. We left Deam Lake by 8:00, and other than stopping once for fuel, we had another uneventful drive to Circle J, which is literally just a block into Michigan, and about 20 minutes from the RV place. We ran through some rain, but not enough to ruin the few bales of hay and alfalfa I still had in the bed of the pickup, and arrived at the same moment our hosts did, right at 2:00. They welcome us warmly and we were set up quickly. We had our choice of paddocks, so we put them in one that had a pretty good stand of clover, hoping that Clio would eat enough of that to help stop her downhill weight spiral. We’ve added a lot more commercial feed to her diet in an effort slow her weight loss down, and that seems to be helping, but sometime in the next couple of days we need to find some weight builder supplements to get her back on the weight gaining side of the scales. Definitely not doing to bother setting up the satellite dish here, too short term to worry about. Hubby did have to rewire his plug because we got a fault from the inverter that the polarity was reversed on the 30 amp plug we had available to us, but one that was done, we settled down for the afternoon. Hoping for another good night sleep, and a restful day tomorrow, before things get hectic again later in the week.

I finally got a good night sleep, the first since we’ve been here, since previous nights I was too tired to get a deep sleep, oddly. Felt really great today, though not enough to go riding (at least, Hubby wasn’t ready), so it looks like we’ll have to come back here again to try out the trails. Relaxed most of the day, it was a tiny bit cooler but still too hot to ride, to our minds. Besides, we had to do a little prep work for our departure tomorrow. The new dog Lola has been having a blast going swimming in the lake, I’ve enjoyed fishing (though I never managed to catch anything) and even little Billy seemed to enjoy exploring. He and Lola are getting along better all the time (though he still growls occasionally when she gets too much into his “space”) but they’re playing more and more everyday, and Billy does his best to accomplish the impossible task of keeping up with her. He seems to have more energy and is certainly not gaining weight any more, as he’s racing around trying to keep up with those long legs of Lola’s. Got everything put away before dark, and set the alarm for another early morning.

After determining we were both too tired and it was too hot to take a ride, and noticing now that the horses were in separate stalls that Hubby’s mare wasn’t eating her alfalfa hardly at all, I brought the horses down by the campsite so they could eat some fresh grass, then took a road trip to do some shopping, picking up several different types of hay, hoping to find one Clio would like. A hay grower sold me Timothy and gave me a quarter bale of orchard grass, and I bought another bale of “local” alfalfa, at least according to the store I bought it from, but it didn’t look like any alfalfa I’ve ever seen, looked more like orchard grass, but the hay guy did indicate local alfalfa looks different from western alfalfa (though the stuff we bought in Texas was from Michigan!) so I took it anyway. The more I look at it though, the more convinced I am it’s not alfalfa. Anyway, when I got back I put a flake of all four types down on the ground and let Clio sniff and pick, and she started chowing down on the “local” alfalfa. That was a relief, at least it wasn’t her appetite that was the problem, now we just have to settle on some kind of forage for her, though I’m still confused as to which it is that she likes! She ignored the Timothy completely, picked a little at the original alfalfa, but seemed to tuck in okay on the other two. Hopefully we can find some more of whatever it is! Got gas and some groceries while I was out, so we’re good to go on the next leg of our journey.

Other than getting the satellite dish set up, and me going fishing down at the lake with the dogs for a while, we had a very relaxing day, though still too tired to really appreciate it. Another really hot and humid day, too hot to go riding, even if we had the energy, which we didn’t!

Spent the day cleaning. ‘Nuff said.

Out early as planned, and thankfully, had an uneventful drive home, never overheating until we started to climb the mountain home, when Hubby had to stop halfway up the mountain to cool down. We had agreed that I would carry on and get the house opened up, and he would come along when he could. I arrived at the gate shortly after 2:00, which gave us the afternoon to get settled in as best we could. We had planned to spend at least the first night in the RV until I could get some preliminary cleaning done, and we had dinner and spent a usual evening there. Glad to be home, super quiet here today!

We had planned on staying in one place today for two reasons; 1) to rest from the longest drive day we’ve done in years (made longer by all the fun we had yesterday), and 2) so that I could do a teleseminar via phone. According to the Verizon coverage map, this place was supposed to have a good cell phone signal, but sadly, that was not the case, which meant I had to drive out someplace until I got a good signal and do the seminar from the vehicle. We had planned on unhooking the truck because we didn’t trust the van much, but then we had trouble with the RV winch, the one that raises and lowers the RV on and off the trailer hitch, even though we’ve never had any trouble with it before. Naturally! So in the end, I had to take the van anyway. I drove back down to the Walmart near the interstate, found a nice quiet shady spot near the back, facilitated the conference call, and then went inside and shopped, I figured that would save us having to stop on the next leg of the journey home, and even though I was already tired, I figured it would be worse tomorrow, so I got it done. Finally got back to camp after 4:00, ready to crash! Hubby had managed to figure out the problem with the winch, mostly just corrosion that he cleaned up, but now it was working like a charm, thank goodness! We did all we could to get ready for another early start tomorrow, then spent the evening doing our best to relax and forget about the trials of yesterday!

Murphy’s Law was in definite force today, with everything possible going wrong. It started out with rain that came in more than an hour before we got out of bed (about 5:45), despite all forecasts saying it wouldn’t arrive until 8:00, so we hurried up to get the last minute stuff done asap. Once we were just about ready, Hubby decided to pull out onto the road before loading the horses into the trailer, but with all the rain, he almost immediately got stuck. After several attempts using blocks and tarps, it became evident things were just getting worse, so rather than play around in the muck and rain, we decided the fastest thing would be just to unhook the truck from the RV and pull it out. A 6.6 liter diesel is no match for a pile of mud, and even though it takes time to hook and unhook, it was definitely much faster than anything else. Miraculously, we were pulling out of the campground intact at 7:00, which had been my original schedule before we started planning around the 8:00 rain, but we lost almost an hour screwing around with the mud. We were already in a slow, intermittent drizzle, but I had to pull the tarp off at the end of the campground road (Broadway, would you believe!), knowing we may lose some of the top bales. Fortunately, we managed to get ahead of the rain in less than an hour, so we hoped it would dry out as the day progressed. Then, on our way through Texarkana, we were on a road with signal lights, and I was just at the wrong timing on a light, and had to slam on my brakes big time to avoid running the red. I saw trucks coming in the crossroad, and was concerned Hubby would try to follow me through the intersection, and not make it. Unfortunately, I came to such a sudden stop that Hubby, though he slammed on his brakes, slid the last 25 feet on damp pavement, and ended up running into the back of me. Fortunately, the rack we have on the back took the brunt of the hit, it wasn’t even enough to set off the airbags in the van, and just barely cracked a few placed on the rack. The front end of the van, however, is a mess! It hit just on the left headlight, and creamed the whole front end. Miraculously, it still ran and didn’t make any disturbing noises, though we clearly had a leak of some kind. We proceeded out to see what would happen, and sure enough, it started to overheat. We stopped for a further inspection, and all I could see leaking was the top radiator hose, so we taped it up and then carefully made our way to the next town, Hope, Arkansas, and made it to a parts store that had a replacement hose. Happily I had a pair of mechanics gloves that gave me some protection from the heat, and I was able to change out the hose in about 45 minutes. Apparently the fan isn’t turning, though, so we’ll have to rely on air cooling for the duration! At least the radiator wasn’t leaking, though it did appear to be bent a little. What a mess! We continued on this extra long day, made even longer by our delays, and finally arrived at Village Creek State Park near Wynne Arkansas. The last bit was uphill, and a slow speed limit, so the van, for the first time the whole day, started to overheat a bit. We didn’t waste any time getting set up, glad we had stalls to throw the horses in (and who seemed no worse for the wear despite the erratic trip), and we finally settled down, exhausted from the length and the stress of the day!