To Busy To Ride

My Lily White......  has been getting an unwanted vacation over the past few weeks. Well, unwanted on my part anyway.  She may be enjoying it. She is alone here at the farm as Marie is out on a lease for the winter and my boarder moved her horse to another stable due to my impending move. Lily's been wonderful about being alone though. No fuss at all, not bothering the fences. Just chilling out and I think enjoying no competition for anything. Though she is more happy to see me now then she was before. We are in full force packing mode here now. Everything is going forward with the sale of our house just fine. The buyer signed off on the inspection other than we have to shock our well. Which we are in the process of doing right now. The closing was scheduled for Oct. 1st but the buyer is having a survey done and that won't start until the beginning of next week. The surveyor said he would not be able to get it done by Oct. 1st but should have it done by the following week. So, we are shooting for a closing date of Oct. 15th.

We have put in an offer that has been accepted on a home in Southern Illinois. It is in the Shawnee National Forest. We would have liked a bit more acreage but as expected, due to our lack of being independently wealthy, we had to make a few compromises to get as much as we could of what we wanted in a price range we could afford.

I have been searching the real estate ad's for where we want to move quite obsessively and also have an agent there looking as well.  I've been determined to find a place with direct trail access. I am not going to move 1/2 way across the country to a place with over 1200 miles of trails and end up living where I have to trailer out all the time to go riding. Well, finding an affordable trail side property has been a bit of a challenge in the area of Shawnee I want to be in. Trail side property seems to be like lake front property here. More expensive if it has direct rail access. We found a few that we looked at when we were there in June that were in our price range but the houses either needed a lot of work or they didn't have a barn etc. And the price didn't leave us money to do any work on the place or build a barn of garage if needed.

A group of us went down the Shawnee in June to pick up a mule I had purchased and also so Fred and I could check out some property's. There were a couple we liked but really only one with direct trail access. It had a fabulous barn and workshop but the house wasn't much to get excited about. Our friend Anthony took us to look at a place that was for sale by owner the morning we left. We could not get into it as we could not get in contact with the owner  who had died 3 weeks prior, so  wasn't answering his phone...... Anyway, after walking the property, we jumped back into Amy's truck and it would not start. We ended up spending hours and hours hanging around while the guys worked on Amy's truck. We liked the property that we had come to look at. The building was the question. Nice big metal barn but the "home" is an apartment built into the barn. I'm told it's nice and I have no trouble living in a house in the barn. Fred was less excited about it.  BUT, enough about that place as it's not THE place....

In our time hanging around, I noticed the place right next to it was also for sale by owner. I kept thinking what a nice looking place it was and walked up by it and just figured it was out of our price range. We were later told that it had sold so I didn't think about it again. A few weeks ago I was searching homes on line and low and behold but I see this place on the market. I contacted my agent and the sale fell through and it's up for sale again. !!!! I'm excited as it turns out it is within our price range. We know what the property looks like and I know it has very close trail access. It has a new 30x40 metal barn/garage. The house is a manufactured home but looks good. 15 years old. I contacted Anthony and asked if he and Cathy would be willing to go look at it for us. He said yes and got in touch with my agent and went down last Saturday. He and Cathy said the place is very clean and well maintained and thought we would really like it. So, we put in an offer and it has been accepted. We have a tentative closing date of Oct. 30th on this home. 

The house is just 1.1 miles from a nice equestrian campground. There are 3 trail heads right from there and a 4th close by. The campground is open year round and....... has a restaurant! 

Pictures of the outside of the house in Illinois. We will add on to the left side of the garage to put stalls in.

Pictures of the Kitchen/Dining/Living room. The home has an open floor plan. 3 Bedroom and 2 full baths. Not excited about all the carpeting but that can be changed after we're settled in. 

Wonderful Relaxing Ride

Today Mary-Jo came over to ride with me. We didn't get a very early start and I did have to work today so we didn't go out for all that long and only did 4 or 5 miles. Today was a fabulous day. Sunny, breezy, in the 70's and not humid for once. Cierra moved her horse yesterday and I was very pleased that Lily was taking it very well. My horse is out on lease right now so Lily is now alone here. But, she doesn't seem to mind. She was, however, happy to see Arthur this morning. She was very quiet while being brushed and saddled. No avoidance today. And she stood quietly to be mounting. Both she and Arthur were wonderful today and we just moseyed enjoying the lovely day. I didn't take my camera, phone or GPS so have no photos or map of today's ride.

Two White Mules

 

Well, today was an interesting day. Tracy, Linda, Leesa and I planned to go riding. I was going to pick up Tracy and we would meet Linda and Leesa in Phippsburg. We invited Cierra to ride with us but she had a riding lesson so couldn't go with us. I got up early enough to have time to get ready. I fed Lily then after hitching my trailer up, I took it for a short trip down the round  making sure my brakes were adjusted properly. I got back and caught Lily and led her to the trailer, pointed her in and she stopped, took a look inside and said, "Nope, not today". What!!!! Lily has been wonderful about loading since the day I got her. Unfortunately, she really meant it. After a few more refusals, I kind of lost it as I KNOW she is not afraid of the trailer. The impatient angry person approach to loading wasn't really very successful. I finally stopped, took a breath and tried a quieter and more persistent approach and in a fairly short time I had Lily on the trailer. Of course now I'm running a bit late. I called Tracy to tell her I was just leaving my house and headed down the road. As I'm getting to the end of my road, I'm hearing a noise I should not be hearing. I rolled down my window and hear a scrape, scrape, scrape sound that is way to much like the sound I was hearing when the wheel came off my trailer. So, I did not dare to go any further and turned around and went back home, unloaded Lily and put her back in her paddock. I called Tracy to say I would not be coming to pick her up. After some discussion, she decided she would just come to my house to ride. I called Linda and Leesa to let them know that Tracy and I would not be meeting them. A few minutes later, they called back and said they were not far from home yet so would just come to my house to ride also. I have such good friends. Then Tracy called me to say she wasn't sure when she's arrive as her mule, Ellie Mae, had gotten loose and run off. Thankfully, it didn't take her long to catch her as she didn't go past the first apple tree she came to.

When Lisa and Linda arrived I went back out to catch Lily. I'm figuring that she is now not going to want to have anything to do with me or with going anywhere near the trailer, where I was going to be tacking her up, after the trailer loading incident earlier. But not so. She saw me and came right to me and led up to the trailer with no hesitation. Yet another example of just how forgiving mules are. Tracy was not that far behind Linda and Leesa and we were soon ready to go. Lily was pretty good about mounting today. We took the lead right off and before we had even gotten out of sight of my yard we met Cierra coming back from her lesson. So, she ended up joining us after all.
 

 

We headed out towards the alpaca farm but did the loop that had not trail for part of it. I've never bothered marking a trail though as the woods are so open and clear though there that there is no need to mark a trail. Once back out on the main trail, I asked everyone if they wanted to try a trail I've only done a few times that come out very close to the turnpike overpass. Cierra and I did it last year and the trail was fairly good. Everyone was up for trying it. We got within sight of the road and could not make it all the way through. there was a nasty muddy spot that none of us wanted to try going through. So, we turned around and headed back.

We then took the trail that comes out below the alpaca farm. At the stream crossing, I took the lead as I wanted to go across first and then take pictures of the others coming across. There is a steep bank drop into the stream and a short steep climb out. It's all very good footing though so very safe. I've done the crossing with Lily quite a few times and the last time I led across. So, I pointed Lily down the back towards the stream, she looks down and says, "not today"...... And I said, "yes, TODAY". It took a while but I finally convinced her that I was more determined we were going to cross that stream first then she was determined not to. Once we were on the other side, I turned, got my camera out and as the others started to come across, the camera pooped out! Gurrrrrrrr. I only got one picture of anyone crossing. We came out on the Academy Rd. and took that to the trail back into the woods by the overpass. I led quite a bit but Leesa's Billy Bob would often work his way to the front where he likes to be. Linda's Gus is always happy to follow. Tracy usually takes the back with Ellie Mae as she doesn't care to have horses behind her. The rest of the ride home was nice with all the mules and horses being on their best behavior. We got in some nice stretches of trotting today.

Oh, and the good news is it turned out there was nothing wrong with my trailer.
The bad news is the sound was coming from my truck.