The night before the start

[imgoneriding@worldnet.att.net]

Well, it looks like most of us have all ended up at the riverfront park in 
St. Joseph.  It's paved, and we are sitting underneath a busy interstate 
highway overchange, and right next to train tracks.  Several trains go by 
every hour, and the freeway above us is a double decker so it's pretty 
noisy.  But being on the pavement is still better than being stuck in the 
mud.  We didn't have any trouble getting out, but after another night of 
rain we might not have been able to get out.  The tractor has been busy 
pulling rigs out all day up at Old Macdonald's Farm where basecamp was/is 
(??).  We are right on the Missouri river here, and have green grass on one 
side.  We opted, like most, to put our horses directly on the pavement 
rather than having them stand in mud for another night. It is supposed to 
rain again.

We have to go to a ride meeting up at Old Macdonald's at 8 p.m. 
tonight.  Then in the morning we have to tack up and haul the horses across 
the river into Kansas, unload on the side of the highway with however many 
other riders there are, and go, at 6 a.m.  We still haven't vetted yet 
either, Barney should be back here soon so we can do that.

It's really gloomy out, the sky has been grey all day and it's been 
cold.  Locals have said that it never rains this much here this time of 
year (yeah, right!).  It's just for our benefit I guess.  Lucky us.

I have Rocky's hind easyboots foamed on already.  In the morning we are 
going to put his front boots on regularly, and hope it all works out.  I 
wanted his front feet to dry out a bit more.

Our refrigerator in the trailer quit working early this morning. So Dave 
dropped me and the horses off (literally) underneath the freeway here and 
left to go find an RV repair shop, to get it fixed. When he got back (they 
fixed it),  he noticed that one of the trailer brakes wasn't working, so he 
had to disconnect and go get some more wiring and take the wheel off the 
trailer and fix it. meanwhile I'm situated here with one really calm laid 
back horse and one idiot arab who thinks that everything is going to get 
him.  He finally got over it, now he isn't phased about anything.  Just 
kinda wound up.  He needs rode. :+P

Dorothy Sue drove by to turn around earlier with a flat on her 
trailer.  Louise made it back after taking their dog back to another vet 
because he got sicker, and if he hadn't gotten treated he would have 
probably died.  He had a really bad bacterial infection from eating horse 
manure.  Scary!

I better get this sent, too much to do and too little time.  spent most of 
the day moving, getting re-situated and fixing things.  Just finally got 
the maps all marked for the crews tomorrow so they know where to go to 
finish camp and for lunch.  Let's hope the weather clears up.

We're camped next to Barney and Linda on one side, the Mahoney's on the 
other, and across the way is Karen Nelson, Jim Baldwin and the Delbecke's 
from Canada.

Happy XP Trails,

Karen
www.endurohorse.com