Sunday, April 22, 2018 – Third Day of Midwest Horse Expo and Travel Back to Rock Cut

Today we didn’t get to the Exhibit Hall until just before 8:00 when it opened, so we missed out on donuts (well, I managed to get a few later on when they restocked), and the traffic was, understandably, much slower today. My two presentations were at 11:30 and 1:00, almost back to back, and afterward, I took a walk to the barn to find out when the drop dead time to get Apollo out of his stall was. I didn’t want a repeat of what happened in Indianapolis to happen here, so I was taking every precaution. The person I found didn’t know, but she called me later to say that they would be starting to break down the stalls at 4:00 a.m. Darn it! We had hoped to spend the night here and not have to rush out after so many long, tiring days, but it looked like that plan was shot to hell. Hubby and I debated about just putting Apollo in the trailer for the night before we went to bed, or going to get him at 4:00 a.m. and doing it then, or trying to drive back down to Rock Cut. In the end, the decision was kind of made for us. After the event ended and we loaded out, just as I was putting the last of our stuff away, I went to wash my hands under the spigot, and they had turned the water off already! Well, that did it. We suddenly didn’t feel secure that they wouldn’t turn the electricity off in the middle of the night as well, so we rushed around and got everything loaded asap. Fortunately, by then, there was very little traffic waiting to get to the barn, so we headed across the parking lot and got Apollo and all his stuff loaded up by 7:00. That gave us just over an hour of daylight to make it to Rock Cut, which was just over an hour’s drive. We decided to take the direct route, which demanded a nearly $5 toll just to go one or two exits into Illinois, but it was better than arriving after dark. At least we weren’t dealing with snow this time! We arrived just as twilight was waning, but I managed to get Apollo set up in no time, and we settled in for the night fairly quickly. It’s only about 250 miles to Lake Lou Yeager from here, so there’s no point in getting up at the crack of dawn tomorrow, hoping to catch up on some zzzz’s tonight!