Off To A Muddy Start

Let’s talk mud. A friend sent this meme to me, and I can relate. Oh, how I can relate!

As I mentioned a while back in the blog, our soil has a lot of clay in it, which keeps water from soaking in very well. It just eventually has to evaporate. After a lot of rain, as we have had almost nonstop for the last couple of weeks, the ground is very soggy and everywhere you walk, you get muddy.

When we first moved to our new place and unloaded our cargo trailer, I made the mistake of parking it on the grass alongside the driveway that leads back to our barn, in case the previous owners needed to get back there to retrieve some things they had stored there. And then the rains came. And came and came.

Yesterday when we got ready to leave, I backed my pickup up to the trailer and we got it hitched up, and I prepared to pull out. And promptly got stuck. Very stuck in the mud, which would not allow any traction for my two-wheel drive truck with street tires.

I rocked the truck back and forth a few times, with no success, then Terry and I got some cardboard to put in front and in back of the tires. We managed to move a few inches, but that was it. Talk about frustrating!

After about 45 minutes of accomplishing nothing, I was just about to go back up to the house to get the keys to my tractor and a chain to pull it out when my neighbor TJ pulled in with his big heavy work truck, staying on the gravel driveway, and easily pulled me out. Thanks, TJ. It was much appreciated!

By the time we were done messing with all of that, once the truck was out we had to walk back up to the house to clean up. I didn’t take a picture of Miss Terry with all the mud on her face because I have to sleep sometime, and I don’t want to wake up dead.

We finally got on the road headed for Florida about noon. We stopped in Troy, Alabama for gas, and for some reason, every one of my credit and debit cards were declined. Yet Terry used one of her cards from the same bank with no problem. I checked online to see if there was some kind of hold on my accounts, but nothing showed. And later in the day when I used one of the same cards to pay for dinner, it worked fine. I have no idea what that was all about.

Anyway, we drove south through Alabama on US Highway 231 , and when we crossed into Florida, we made a pit stop at the Welcome Center and I took a picture of the driver’s side rear tire of the truck and another of the trailer. This was after about 250 miles of driving, and a lot the mud had fallen off by then.

We got on Interstate 10 and took it east to Madison, Florida, where we spent the night at the Best Western Plus. Darkness had caught up with us, and my night vision is terrible, so about thirty miles from our destination, we stopped at a rest area and Terry took the wheel. There was a full moon and I managed to get a halfway decent picture with my phone’s camera.

I must be getting better at backing up a trailer. Not good, by any means, but maybe a little better. There is a truck parking area at the back of the hotel, and once we got there I backed the trailer around a corner in the parking lot and then back about 100 feet in the dark to get it into the parking area, with Terry’s guidance, and I managed not to hit any cars in the parking lot or to run her over.

All we had was a bowl of cereal each for breakfast, so once we checked into the hotel we walked a short distance to a McDonald’s for dinner. It is one of those restaurants combined with a convenience store, and after we were done eating we stopped at the store to pick up some snacks for the road today. There was a lady waiting to check out and she said she had been there a few minutes. We stood there with her, wondering where the clerk was. A few other customers came in and stood around, too, and eventually left because the clerk still had not appeared. After about fifteen minutes we said the heck with it and left our stuff on the counter and started out the door, when he finally came strolling up from the bathroom to check us out. I have no idea how much business the store lost while he was back there, or what anybody might have just walked off with, but if I was his manager, I would find a helper to cover the store for him while he takes care of his personal business.

We have about three and a half hours to go today to get back to Edgewater, and we are looking forward to seeing our friends there and to getting the rest of our stuff packed up and out of our old house so we can get it sold.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – Why do noses run and feet smell?