Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - Laundry/Feet in the Pacific Day!

Well, the time has come to do laundry. Though the RV has a stack washer/dryer, one must have water and a drain for it to be useful, and we've had neither for months, so we've reached the point of running out of clothes, so a trip to town is a must. I went to a laundromat (having acquired a bunch of quarters at a car wash change machine a few weeks ago), only to discover they used plastic cards that you had to buy from a machine with bills (no quarters). The price seemed very expensive for the machines, the process seemed too complicated, and there was a stern woman who worked there looking over my shoulder, so I decided to move on to another laundry. Gracie (my Verizon GPS) led me to another laundromat, one without a sentinel, but that was also plastic cards. I guess that's all the rage these days. Anyway, the price of the machines was considerably less, so I was happy I moved. Several hours later, and after a side trip to the hardware store, I was heading back to camp. Even though the weather was damp and was sprinkling intermittently, we decided to take a short ride to the beach just to see if we could persuade the horses into the ocean today. After all, it has been since last October since they've been on a beach (on Assateague Island, Maryland), and they had to be persuaded there, too. So we saddled up, happy we didn't need boots, and took the mile trail to the beach. The sand was soft, and the footing so different, the horses were snorting all the way, with my gelding pitching a fit or two on the way. They just about settled down when we crested the berm where the beach lay. They were all a-twitter for a while, but it didn't take long for them to relax a bit, at least until we tried to get them nearer to the water. That took some patience and time, but eventually, success! Feet in both oceans! And in less than a year! Pretty cool! We headed back to camp, delighted with our results, looking forward to a little celebration. As we were putting the horses away, Judy came by, and we invited her over for a drink. She came by a bit later, and we sat at the picnic table and chatted for several hours, getting so involved that she apparently missed dinner, which she had planned to have with her son and his family at the next campground over. He arrived with a covered plate, then he got involved with the conversation and we chatted for a while more before he had to get back to the family and Judy left to have dinner. We did the same, had a pleasant evening before landing in bed, content with the day.