Monday, February 7, 2011 - Rainy Day

Well, the forecasters were right today, despite having clear skies when we went to bed, it rained most of the night later on, and well into the morning. It quit about noon, but the train of rain was between us and our next destination, so we decided to stay one more day. Used it to do housekeeping, laundry, reading, and keep searching for new horse camps, as I have a very good broadband signal here, though I'm getting close to maxxing out my monthly limit, so I may have to spring for another megabyte. Either that or give it a rest for awhile, and that's hard to do! Hopefully the forecasters will be right and tomorrow will be sunny!

Sunday, February 6, 2011 - Ride, Caverns and Super Bowl Sunday

Since our original plan was to only stay here two nights, we wanted to try to get everything in today. We started out with a nice ride after breakfast. The trails were great, typical Gulf coast sand/clay/pine needles and leaves. Despite the enormous amounts of rain, there were only a few puddles on the trails, and none of them more than an inch or two deep. The only drawback is there are only a few miles of trails, and one of them was closed. We took the Fenceline loop, which is only about 3 miles long, then when we hit the dirt road, we decided to go for a run down the road a ways. The horses were brilliant again, frisky and eager despite the fact that the last ride we took was 15 miles long, so they charged ahead with a lovely trot and canter along the road. It seems the 3 mile walk had just barely warmed them up. We cantered for a bit, then turned around and cantered back, and still they hadn't even broken into a sweat. Still, it was a nice ride, though they were quite surprised we were back in camp in less than 90 minutes. I could almost read my horse's eyes, "Is that it?" Not to worry, we'll be going places with lots longer trails, I assured him. After they were put away, Hubby and I had some soup (our standard lunch on our new "New Year's Resolution Diet", which I just made up, and which we've each lost about 7 pounds in the last 4 weeks, not fast but steady), then we drove over to the cavern tour in time for the 3:00 tour, which lasted about an hour. It was supposed to last 50 minutes, but we kept slowing down to take photos, and, as usual, the tour guide wanted to go at a much faster pace than we did. I'm glad Carlsbad Caverns still has mostly self-guided tours so that you can go at your own pace, but unfortunately they don't do that here. So we go to race from one room to the next, only to stand around for 10 minutes listening to bad jokes and lame stories, with the rare piece of informative tidbit thrown in occasionally. Not bad, though, there were some pretty good formations of interest. Afterward, we came back to camp, set the PVR up for the Superbowl, and watched a good western movie. Unlike most people, we like to watch the football, not the commercials, so skip through them on our Dish PVR. So about halfway through we joined the game (from the beginning, and skipped the ads and the commentary, jumping from play to play. We caught up to the Live shot about halfway through the 4th quarter, which was just perfect for us, and watched it till the end. A great game, so much closer than so many of them, we enjoyed it completely. Way to go Green Bay! Nice to know they still have a good team even without Brett Favre. Anyway, the weather forecast is looking dismal for tomorrow, with great streams of rain training from the southwest to the northeast, so it looks like we may be stuck here another day if we want to travel in sunny weather, which we like to do to keep the hay dry. At least I'll be able to get more laundry done!

Saturday, February 5, 2011 - Travel Day to Florida Caverns

 Well, despite assurances from the weather forecasters, it was not a sunny day today. It was cloudy and overcast almost the entire trip, and at one point we ran into a bit of beady little snow. Other than a couple of stops for fuel and to pick up breakfast, it was an otherwise uneventful drive. Arrive at Florida Caverns State Park around 3:30, got checked right in (I had made the reservation online), stopped at the dump in the park (the one at the Mississippi border where we originally had planned to dump was closed), and quickly got settled in. There are only three equestrian sites here, two of which can be reserved, one they withhold for walk-ins. There is a good sized field and woods area next to us though, where lots more tent campers could find a spot. We get water and electric and stalls for the horses for $20/night total, which is high but could be much worse. There are 5 or 6 large covered box stalls, and maybe 10-12 small open stalls as well. We were the only ones here with horses, though there were a number of folks around in tents. Got settled in, started doing laundry (practically mandatory when we have electric AND water together), and relaxed for the rest of the night.

Friday, February 4, 2011 - Another Cold, Rainy Day

Slept late since there wasn't any real reason to get up, and in bed was the warmest place in the house. Really lazy day today, since we couldn't ride or do anything outside. Watched movies and news, that was about it today. Hubby's eye is better now, nothing to stop us from moving on tomorrow!

Thursday, February 3, 2011 - Rain Day

Cold and wet all day, woke up to a layer of ice covering the tarp over the hay, the generator, and everything else out in the open. Got the horses out of the trailer where they had spent the night. Hubby spent most of it watching TV and I worked on finding more horse camps in the south and east, which I had done before but got lost when my computer crashed and I didn't realize that Carbonite wasn't saving my Google Earth My Places (which I now move to a file that I know will be backed up regularly). Mostly found places in Florida, which, judging by the unusually cold weather, is going to be where we stay for the next 6-8 weeks. Put the horses in the trailer again for the night, as the forecast was for 100% chance of rain and lows near freezing. Sure wish we'd made it to Florida before now, not looking forward to yet another day of cold wet weather, but we'll just have to hunker down and suffer through it! At least we're not having 60 inches of snow, which seems to be the norm for everyone north of the Mason-Dixon!

Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - Shopping Day

Cold and cloudy today. Forecast keeps changing, first for the better, then for the worse. Hubby's eye isn't really well enough to drive unless we were really pressed, and since we're not, we decided to stay. Unfortunately, the temps keep dropping and the cold rain keeps falling. Ran into nearby Wiggins to drop off mail, get gas for the van and the generator, and enough groceries to last us until Saturday, when the weather, theoretically, will be warmer and sunny and we'll be moving on to north Florida. Put the horses in the trailer for the night, since the forecast now is for freezing rain overnight, with lows in the 20's. Once again, "unusual" for this part of the country. I'm beginning to get paranoid, that the cold weather is intentionally following us. Looking for a horse camp in the Florida Keys, if anybody knows of one!

Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - Bookkeeping Day

Had a good night's sleep after taking some ibuprofen before going to bed (Hubby took Tylenol). Spent the day working on my bookkeeping, finishing off last year's books and moving everything to a new bookkeeping program, and preparing to do the taxes. I'm waiting for a few more weeks before having mail forwarded, to make sure we have all the tax info. I suspect that some will be late because of the tardiness of the extension of the Bush tax rates in December. I trust they won't mind if I send in my taxes late, too (yeah, right!). It was warm, and rained most of the day, so it was the perfect day for office work. Hubby watched the news most of the day (the Egyptian uprising), then took a nap in the afternoon. On the ride yesterday, a branch swung and hit him in the face, and making a small cut on his eye, which is small but painful, so I bandaged up his eye to keep him from rubbing it and making it worse. Although we had originally planned to leave tomorrow, there's a cold front coming our way (one of the worst storm's of the century, according to most news reports), so there's only a few degrees difference between where we are and where we're going. Since here we are paying zero to camp, and will have to pay $20/night at the next place, we'd rather not do that when the weather is cold and rainy and we won't be able to ride anyway. The added incentive of Hubby suffering, and possibly not even able to drive if his eye doesn't get well enough, we've decided to stay here, even though it's going to be getting really cold in the next few days. We can always throw the horses into the trailer if it gets too cold. With that decided, we went to bed snuggling, using body heat to fend off the cold (whoo-hoo!).