Happy Birthday, my love!
Hard to believe you would have been 90 today, if you had only made it this far! Still celebrating our life together, you made me whole, and I miss you! But we never lived in the past, always the future, so today was another day of pressing forward for me! Woke up to a rainy day, and had to finish packing in the rain, unfortunately, but at least it quit about 20 minutes before I got to the Rest and Ride here in Suwannee. It's literally only a couple minutes away from Sheila's place, so in many way, it felt like a sort of homecoming. I guess whenever I spend any extended period of time anywhere it will feel like that! Arrived around 11:20 after an uneventful drive, but that didn't leave me much time to get ready, so I didn't even unhook the truck before I put Apollo in a paddock and saddled up Flash. Penny arrived on time, but after Linda, who I hadn't realized was the same Linda that stayed at Sheila's place with me, and even rode Apollo one day when her horse was not up to par! Small world! She's since sold her house and bought a new trailer, and has committed to being full-time on the road like me! Nice to see her again. So we headed off just after noon, and while it was productive, it was also a bit frustrating for many reasons. Penny isn't literate in GPS or Google Earth or any of the tools I sent her to use, so we were basically winging it most of the day. Trails I had opted to use (and were perfectly workable) she had never seen before, so they needed extra clearing, which kind of defeated the purpose of having her scout the trails for me. I also let her take me to the Suwannes Springs loop she kept insisting I use, but I really disliked it, as it went by and through a very junky area, not to mention under a bridge where apparently homeless people live, though they weren't there when we went through. Nevertheless, Linda's horse freaked out at the traffic barreling past her overhead on the bridge, and even Flash had trouble passing the dilapidated trailers past the junkyard, so I'm really adverse to using that last loop. I'm still trying to work out exactly the trail, and was a bit disheartened that we ran out of time to check out the last two trails I wanted. I also got turned around once and had to correct that mistake, so everything took longer than I expected. It was well after 5:30 when we got back, and then Penny wanted to show me where the best places to put out water troughs would be, so we spent another hour driving around the various trailheads that she thought might work. Of course, I can't decide that until I decide which trails we're going to take, and that's still entirely up in the air. This is really hard, to try to plan a ride when I have no idea what the trails are like, and no one to scout them out for me ahead of time. And it was all made worse by the fact that Flash was misbehaving, probably because of the other horses, but he was very jumpy all day, and I was getting rope burns from trying to hold him in all day. Just another reminder of why I prefer to ride along, especially when I'm marking trails. Anyway, it was after 7:00 by the time we got back, and by the time I fed and blanketed the horses (it was going to go into the 30's tonight!), it was quite late. I managed to soak Lola's foot a couple of times before I finally called it a night. Feel pretty tired, and a little frustrated, but, that's life! At least I'm still above ground, my love! Good night, babe!
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