Ready Or Not....

...it has come time to leave.

In general, I am really happy with everything I have done with Gem up to this point. I missed two rides that I had really wanted to get in: one for the funeral and then one when we walked the entire thing because of her attitude. If we don't finish, I'm not going to blame it on missing two rides. Two rides shouldn't make that big of an impact and if they do, then I didn't do a good job overall anyway.

The original plan was the leave Thursday after dropping Wyatt off at school and arrive in camp around 10:30 am. Then Sunday they posted that 280+ riders would be in attendance and I went into super stressed out mode texting back and forth with another friend who is going up to do the LD on Saturday.

Camp is beautiful and large enough to house that many rigs, but it is long and if you get stuck in the back field you won't make it back to your rig at the holds. Gem does way better back in her pen at holds than in a very busy and hectic crew area, so the plan is to head back if able. Able = less than 10 minute walk. I made the last minute decision to leave Wednesday morning instead and get to camp as it opened around 12. That is one benefit of being your own boss. You can do things like that.

I spent Sunday packing up the truck with all the camping gear and made note of the little things I still needed to get such as batteries. Tuesday night I went grocery shopping and packed all my camping and riding clothes which just leaves grabbing the food at home and then the grain and hay and horse at the barn.

I've also been obsessively watching the weather forecast which has stayed dry the entire time for the ride. At the end of last week the weather was looking just about as perfect as it could get at 70 degrees. By this morning it was looking more like 80 degrees and I am hoping it doesn't heat up beyond that. Either way it should be cooler than it has been leading up to the ride since it has been hovering in the upper 80s and low 90s with high humidity. The rain all week this week has helped to kick the pollen off the trees and lower humidity, both great things.

And so with that we are off.... I will see you all on the back side of this ride one way or another.