Monday, June 29, 2020 – Hot Runaround Day

Hi Honey,
Guess I’m not far enough north, the heat’s really starting to catch up with us! Forecast called for a lot of rain today (though it didn’t really come into the area until late afternoon, and it didn’t arrive at camp until about half an hour ago), so I decided to do some running around today. One of the women I met last week ordered a book, so I put that together so that I could mail it, then headed out to a tiny post office to drop it off. There are two other national forest horse camps within about a half hour drive of here, so I decided to check them out as an alternative to Brown County next time I’m in the area. Turns out they’re both fairly easily accessible even for a rig my size, and they have enough open space for the solar panel to function. Hickory Ridge is fairly small, maybe a dozen sites, and Blackwell is much bigger, probably 40-50 sites. The only problem is they don’t have any water. Well, Hickory Ridge has a scummy pond they consider a livestock watering hole not too far away, but I’m not sure I would want my horses drinking from that. So that would be a challenge. I ran into some riders there, though, who were camping up the road (there are two large commercial horse camps just up the road), and one of the men there said that Hoosier Horse Camp might be willing to let me fill my tank up there, they were usually pretty cool about it, so that’s a possibility for some future date. At least I know what they look like now and that I can get to them okay. After reconnoitering them, I headed up to Blooomington, the nearest city, and went to Tractor Supply for propane and horse feed. Turns out that all my searching for Balancer was a waste, as they had two bags on a stack, on sale! I spent 20 minutes on the phone at the Lodge yesterday trying to track some down, and they had it right here. Anyway, I stocked up, then headed to Walmart for just a few things before heading back to camp. Just missed a few rain showers, fortunately, but it’s in the low 90’s with very high humidity, so it’s pretty miserable. Guess maybe I should have sprung for an electric site, huh? Well, it’s all part of the experiment, isn’t it? When I got back, I first picked up my new screen room which was finally delivered today, then I put the horses out on the anchors for awhile, and ran the generator a bit to try to cool it down, but it never really helped that much. Finally a storm came in around 10:00 tonight (and is still going on at 11:00 as I’m writing this), but the temps have dropped down into the low 70’s now, so at least I should be able to sleep without sweating tonight. Took my shower early, didn’t even bother to heat the water up, room temperature felt just right! Settled down for the evening, but now it’s bedtime, the rain is just starting to lessen a bit. I only hope Lola settles down, she’s hiding behind my chair right now, I suspect she’ll be scratching on the bedroom partition once I get up there, silly girl. Fingers crossed she doesn’t bug me too much and I get a good night sleep. I’m hoping to take a ride tomorrow, hoping the forecast is wrong. On that note, I’m off to bed! Good night, sweetie! Love you!