Let ourselves sleep a little later today, as we were all tuckered out from our long ride yesterday, but still got going around 8:00. I had made arrangements to top off my load of hay, so I ran out to the north side of Dunnellon to pick up about 10 bales, while Hubby started putting things away. By the time I got back, we finished loading, and we flushed our tanks at the dump station, is was after 11:00. Since we detest paying huge tolls for so many axles on the Turnpike, and we like driving off the beaten track anyway, we took a back route my GPS showed us, which was very scenic, taking us through lots of orange groves that were just bursting with fruit (the urge to go “scrumping” was very high!), and we enjoyed it tremendously, until I took a foolish risk to make it to Okeechobee on my tank of gas, and fell short by 5 miles. I was sure I could make it, but apparently the headwind was lowering my mileage even worse than I thought, but we paid the price for it. Hubby had to run into town and buy a small gas can, but it was only one gallon, and for a diesel (which is a much more complicated animal when it comes to running out of fuel), we needed at least two, so he had to make two trips. Fortunately, this had happened once before and we knew how to loosen the nut and pump the fuel under the hood to get it going, but it was nearly sunset by the time we got back on the road, stopped to pick up a quick meal, and pitch dark by the time we got to my brother’s house. He wanted to put us in a new place in back by the stables, but we didn’t want to navigate it in the dark, so we just parked in front and opened up for the night. Got the horses settled in, chatted a bit with my brother before we just had to get inside and relax a bit. Much more stress on this whole trip than usual, but I guess that’s part of the price we pay for staying home for so many months!
Speak Your Mind