Finally Back Home!

After a few days of recovery I figured it was time to update with the final details of the 'hell tour'.....which really from start to end was genuinely the drive from hell!  Seeing as we couldn't get the truck in to be fixed until Monday we decided to make the most of our stay in Rapid City and rented a car to drive up to Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial, I have to say I've always wanted to take in these sights so although it wasn't a planned trip I'm glad I had the chance as they were incredible to see.  I found the Crazy Horse Memorial to be very interesting, it was facinating to watch the video of the sculptor who started it and how he used to pack the dynamite up the mountainside day after day-made me really aware of just how lazy modern day society has become with all the luxuries that we take for granted every day, hard to imagine how this guy found motivation every day to hike up that mountain all by himself packing tools the whole way.  We took the truck in to the dealership first thing on the Monday morning to get the tires replaced and the alternator fixed...took them two hours to fix the alternator and ten hours to track down and put all six tires on the truck (after taking them off they ended up finding structural problems in two more of the tires so basically I managed to drive from Tennessee to Rapid City with only one half decent tire out of six-I think that's pretty darn impressive!!;)  We left Rapid City at 6:00 that night and made it to Billings, Montana where we overnighted at a very nice jumper facility, we were up at the crack of dawn and on the road again at 5:30am, heading to Libby, Montana to pick up another horse enroute to Canada.  The drive to pick up this horse involved winding up a muddy dirt road before arriving at the place where the driveway was washed out....so we had to drive truck and trailer through a lake up to the bumper to pick up the horse....the excitement never ends!  We made it to the boarder crossing around 8:00pm and this was the only portion of the trip that was easy, the poor lady at customs was so befuddled with the horses and their paperwork that she didn't even bother to look in my passport oops!!  We crossed the boarder in to Creston where we were met with a snow storm passing through so once again we were back driving around 30km up and down the mountain (I was feeling pretty thankful for the new tires at this point in time!).  We made it in to Kelowna around 2:00am and got the horses off safe and sound, I have never been so happy to see Kelowna before in my entire life!!  I had barely been home for two days before my sister in law went in to labour and had a little girl, so I arrived back home to Canada just in time to become and aunt!  Needless to say it has been an exciting week, hence the late post!  I'm back to my regular routine now of riding and teaching, have had a really productive week getting everyone back on track, my young prospect Roz is doing very well, Sylvie had been keeping her fit for me over the winter months and did a great job as little Rozzie is definitely starting to grow up and I am excited to see how she progresses over the next few months, also had some great lessons this week and am thrilled to be back working with everyone and to see that they all did their homework diligently over the winter months and also excited to have some new faces at the barn and in lessons to work with!  I plan to keep this blog going now that I am back home, the posts may be less frequent and will definitely still be mainly about horses, training and my experiences and sometimes I might throw in some other interesting topics along the way (haha be prepared it might get weird but it will always be entertaining!!:)