A few hours after going to bed early last night, the rains arrived, trumpeted by much thunder and lightening. It continued off and on all night, waking us up every several hours, both from the noise and from having to get up and close windows. So far, most of the rains here have been almost windless, and even these had very little wind, not even enough to make us bring the awning in. Of course, that might have to do with the fact we’re surrounded by forest, so that may have cut down on it a bit. In any event, we both had a pretty horrible night sleep, not exactly what we needed for this day. Started off taking the dogs for a good walk, though, with Hubby along as well. We’re trying to balance exercise with his meds, every time he takes his pills these days, it makes his legs ache and gives him a headache. We walked before he had his morning dose, and he did just fine. After a late breakfast (we had to sleep in after the rough night!), we started putting things away, because we want to get a REALLY early start tomorrow. There’s rain in the forecast in the morning, but we’re hoping we can get out before it starts up too much. We’re going to start out with the tarp on (something we hate to do, as it ruins the tarp and sometimes beats up the truck, but we haven’t tried it since getting a heavy duty canvas tarp), but hope to be able to take it off once we run out of the potential rain area.

After having such a nice ride yesterday, Hubby and I spent most of the day relaxing, though we did take a walk with the dogs. Didn’t have a very good night sleep last night, just too dang hot and muggy. Never got below about 75 degrees, no sheets and still sweltering in the heat. Hard to sleep when you’re dripping with sweat! We ran fans until bedtime, but even that didn’t help too much. Proof we’ve spent too much time in the south, need to get north! Unfortunately, the weather forecast is looking like rain, rain, and more rain, except for one brief window Tuesday, so we’ve changed our plans again. We’ll leave Tuesday and head north to Village Creek State Park east of Little Rock, Arkansas. It will be a VERY long day, but there’s not really anything in between, and I have a teleconference to facilitate on Wednesday, so we need someplace with a good cell phone signal. We’ll stay on Wednesday to do the conference and recuperate from what will likely be nearly 10 hours of driving (about twice what we normally do, but weather is forcing our hand), and then run home on Thursday, just ahead of a front that’s coming in. Fingers crossed, it will all work out as planned! Having finalized that decision, we spent the rest of the day relaxing, watching TV (further reducing the recorded programming on our DVR, a long overdue exercise), before going to bed early.

Hot and humid as only the Deep South can get today, and once again, we decided, based on the forecast, to wait another day to ride. Hubby is determined to recuperate, and doesn’t want to push himself to hard and have a relapse, and I concur. We spend the day watching movies and trying to move as little as possible, using just a few floor fans and the overhead paddle fan to try to stay cool with, not easy with humidity this high. One thing I will say, I look 5 years younger since getting out of the desert! Horses are doing a good job of chomping down the grass throughout the area, haven’t seen but a couple of cars come down the road, turn around and go back, since we’ve come here. No sign of any forest personnel at all, either. Very quiet!

After reviewing the weather forecast, which is looking rather rainy for quite a long period of time, we spent some time in the morning reviewing our options. The advantage of where we are is that it is very quiet and peaceful, far away from any traffic so the dogs can run around, and has lots of grass for the horses so we can save on feeding them hay. The down side is, it’s still in Texas, a long way from home, and there’s no satellite signal (too many trees). The next several places I have lined up are all near roads with traffic, one is next to a railroad track, and two have just a possibility of a satellite signal. All will likely suffer from rain and mud, including here. We determined the real priority is to get Hubby fit. Right now he seems to have one good day, followed by a not so good day. We were going to ride today, as it’s only a 20% chance of rain after 1:00, but he decided he wanted to rest instead, to put his full recuperation behind him, or at least get used to his meds so he doesn’t feel as bad as he did on Monday driving. I did manage to persuade him to take a brief walk, just to help him build his strength up, but otherwise we spent most of the day relaxing, watching movies and watching the sun come out late in the afternoon. We took a second walk in the afternoon, just around the campsite area and up the road a bit so Lola could take a swim, then settled down for another quiet evening. Beginning to think we may not get a ride in at all over the next week, the way the weather is looking. Sigh.

Though we had hoped to take a short ride today, Hubby persuaded me to take a rest day (though I’ve felt more productive and had more energy since we’ve been here than I’ve had in a long time!), and in between cloudy skies, a few showers, and the occasional burst of sun, we had a pleasant day, mostly reading, with me doing some inevitable work on the computer. Late in the afternoon he suddenly got a headache, something that seems to happen every time he takes one of his new prescriptions. We’re hoping that will work itself out, we certainly don’t want daily headaches to be the new normal! I put the horses out on their anchors today, so they could mow some of the very long grass out here (and save hay : -), and they’ve done a smashing job, though there’s plenty left for the rest of the week. A quiet day, a quiet evening, hopefully tomorrow will result in a ride!

Per our doctor’s instructions, we arranged to have a blood test done in nearby Lufkin, TX, so that they could follow Hubby’s progress from afar. We took the horses and dogs with us, just to be on the safe side, as we aren’t that familiar with the neighborhood out there at Davy Crockett, and didn’t want to take any chances. We made stops at Tractor Supply, Walmart and Petsmart in order to weigh Lola, but unfortunately, this particular store didn’t have a scale, so no luck on that. Got what we needed for the week, then headed back to camp, pausing once to sit out a torrential rainstorm. No sense taking any chances with the whole family on board! The storm passed in only about 10 minutes, and we carried on with skies brightening the further west we went. Got back to camp with plenty of time to take another walk and swim at the pond (for Lola, not me!), and some ball chucking as well, before settling down to a nice salmon dinner and a quiet evening of recorded TV.

Got up before dawn, got into work clothes for a change, and headed to the Capitol to meet with our client. In addition to our 2 hour meeting, we also tagged along to a luncheon to watch him in action, to get a better feel for the work that needs to be done in the future. We were supposed to meet with my other brother and his friend in the afternoon, but the temps started dropping and the forecast turned to icy rain, so we headed home instead, with a couple of stops to pick up groceries and horse feed along the way. Extra cold is called for tonight, more icy rain until mid-day tomorrow!