Across The Continent We Go!!:D

We arrived safe and sound in Florida, though it definitely took a few days to recover from the trip:)  The travel down was long and somewhat eventful but we made it in one piece safe and sound and for this I am thankful!  Our first night/day of travel we literally left just as 2011 arrived, I think we pulled out of the Serendipity driveway at 12:02am New Years Day, our first drive took us to Midale Saskatchewan (the roads through the rockies were a bit icy so we had to really take our time but once we got to Calgary it was fairly smooth sailing from there on out), it was absolutely FREEZING in Saskatchewan when we arrived, temperatures that night down to -40!!  Luckily for Nico we booked him in to overnight at Tica stables which is very lovely and heated, we had stayed at this farm in the summer when we went to Kentucky with Tango and I knew that it was a great setup for Nico to rest enroute so he had a good rest.  Day two we awoke to road reports that the main highway through Minnesota was closed due to a huge pile up and hazardous road conditions so we decided to just go a few hours across the boarder to Minot, North Dakota and not risk heading into Minnesota, we again had a nice small heated barn to overnight at, definitely out in the country, we had dinner at a small diner where all the waitresses seemed to know every customer who came in and there were two ladies sitting in the booth behind us talking about how they had run their car into a dead frozen cow that was left in the middle of the highway....yep we are definitely out in the country now, flashbacks of Fargo were going through my mind for sure!!;)  Day three arrived and the road reports for Minnesota were still questionable so we decided to take an alternate route south through South Dakota and then east toward Iowa, the roads were okay, visibility was not great and icy just across the boarder into South Dakota but we took our time and made it safely...I have to say that between North Dakota and South Dakota I have never seen so many fences running along so many fields for so many miles!!  We made it in to Iowa without incident and headed out bright and early excited for what was to be our 'easy' day of driving, as it turned out the first highway we were on in Iowa just randomly ended in the middle of nowhere and we drove around in circles for an hour before finding it again....great of all the places to get lost driving around the cornfields in Iowa haha!  We carried on and stopped for fuel a few hours later and thankfully I have the habit of checking all of the tires whenever we stop as sure enough I heard a distinct hissing coming from the back right tire on the trailer so off we went to a service station 5 miles down the road to get the tire repaired and we were back on the road again...due to the delay we ended up going through St Louis, Missouri at peak rush hour with six lanes of traffic bumper to bumper going up the bridges we went right downtown by Busch Stadium and the St Louis Arch, with the amount of traffic we saw I cannot believe that there are that many people who live in Missouri!!  Next we drove right through the heart of Nashville at around midnight and we got in to our rest stop in Tennessee very late due to the tire and getting lost, thankfully the host Tami Crawford (a fellow dressage rider also heading to Florida) was very welcoming and had the stall all ready to go, I'm sure Nico slept as well as I did that night!  The next day we took a shorter journey to keep things easier on Nico and went to Perry, Georgia which involved driving through downtown Atlanta-we accidentally missed the city bypass turnoff and ended up downtown Atlanta with signs stating "no vehicles with more than six wheels allowed downtown" oops!!  So we did the smart thing and drove in the HOV lane through six lanes of rush hour traffic straight downtown right past the 1996 Olympic torch, Nico definitely got a full tour of the US haha, we stayed at a small country barn (complete with a collection of animal sculls on the barn wall as well as an assortment of pet chickens, turkeys and goats, needless to say the stalls were nice and Nico seemed right at home with the turkeys!).  The next day we finished up our journey pulling in to the Lady Jean Ranch in Jupiter Florida in the late afternoon, the barn is fantastic (you can check it out at http://www.ljrelite.com/index1.html) it is huge and airy with great big grooming stalls, an open covered riding arena with a covered walkway, a beautiful large outdoor track and ring and beautiful turnout fields, there's a nice group of riders here from across North America to train with Albrecht and everyone seems great, the weather has been nice and sunny so far and Nico is settling in well (I have to say he was a real trooper about the whole travel side of things, I was very impressed with him, he never complained about getting in the trailer and was very bright and ready to go the whole trip almost seemed as though he was enjoying his little adventure!:), I've had two light rides on him since arriving and he feels very fresh and lively so he seems to have fared well through the journey!  Oswald is here too enjoying the warmth of Florida and thanks to my mom for keeping me company on the drive down (even if you did get me lost a couple times;) mom is going to stay down until my first show in a couple weeks which is great.  All in all the drive down I think was quite successful, I really don't mind being on the road so long as the flat tires stay away!  Haha I think with all of the driving I've done as of late I could definitely be a professional truck driver!