Today they were having fun side matches. This just gives the competitors a chance to make sure their single action six shooters, rifle and shot gun were in top working order. Ralph decided not to participate because to the nasty weather. Of course he heard about it from his friends.
We were having our friend John come up to spend the day with us. He is a 70 plus year old bachelor and use to compete in cowboy action shooting. The last few years he has not competed, but still helps with setting up matches at his home gun club that he belongs in Damascus, MD.
He arrived with fresh cut Delmonico steaks from cows that were grass fed and with no antibiotics. He gets his meats from his local butcher shop. I wish I would have gotten a picture of John, it just slipped my mind. We just love seeing him and we had a wonderful dinner and just gabbed the evening away. We do keep in touch with John through out the year.
When he left that evening, his full size van got stuck in the quagmire or deep red clay, but with several cowboys that came along to give him a push, he got going.
Friday, October 2nd was another day of rain, rain and more rain, plus bitter cold and wind! Ralph got dress and we went down to the range. I was surprised our 1 ton dually truck was able to plow through the deep mud. (For now anyway). Dually's are known for spinning on wet grass.
We were in the toasty warm clubhouse drinking coffee and Ralph was just starring out the big picture windows watching the rain fall on the shooters that were down on the range. He soon decided that it was just not worth it trying to shoot in such nasty cold weather and most of all getting his firearms wet where they would become slippery and hard to hold onto.
When your firearms get wet, you have to take them all apart and it is a pain in the "barrel"! Of course he was reminded all day long by his cowboy friends that he was a "weenie". But that was okay, he was a toasty warm weenie.
After the match, the caterer turned out a wonderful meal of hot dogs, cheese burgers and sausage with onions and peppers along with many sides and cake for dessert. The nice evening gave us a chance to see and visit with many of our shooting friends.
They had wonderful entertainment. Dandy Don sang old western songs and he was really good.
That evening my horse crazy childhood best friend Jeannie came to pick me up on this nasty night. We were heading to Eyler's Horse Auction.
When we had our farm, our ritual was to go to Eyler's. They had a horse auction every first and third Friday of the month. Ralph and I bought several nice horses from Eyler's over the years.
We had planned to meet an old acquaintance of ours named Ted. In the late 1960's when I was in Jr. High, may parents gave me horseback riding lessons as did Jeannie's parents. There we met many nice horse crazy kids and we all took lessons there for a few years.
The Heller Family owned and ran "Camp Adventure" in rural Dickerson, MD. I ended up working there along with many other kids who started out riding there. We all did anything we could to be around horses.
All of us agreed, Camp Adventure was a big part of our childhood and will be in our memories forever! Ted became a summer camp counselor and worked for the Heller's until he went to college.
Jeannie, Ted and me.
There rule was, when I turned 16 and got a real paying job and did well in school, that they would buy me a horse. My job would pay for his stable board and his care. He passed away in 1995 and I owned him for 24 years. He lived 30-1/2 years and was buried on our old farm.
** A CUTE STORY: When it came time to name my farm, I wanted to have some part of Rush Boy's name in the farm name. After all he was my first horse. My mom and I were sitting at the table. I was toying with names that started with "Rush" such as "Rushing Stream", Rushing Creek" and then my mom said "Rushing Winds" and that was it! That name was just perfect because we got heavy winds coming off of the Catoctin Mountain Range.
Rush Boy and me. (1983)
Anyway, it was fun to go to Eyler's and meet up with Ted who we had not seen in 40 plus years. He introduce us to his wife Marcie. A couple of years ago, he got on Facebook and started the Camp Adventure Alumni Group. It was there that we all hooked up with many riders from the past and the best part was we got to get in touch with Mr. and Mrs. Heller who are now in their 80's and have a big farm way down in southern Virginia.
While at Eyler's, I also got to see Harry, a dear friend of mine. He is an old horseman who boarded Tamar, an Arabian at our farm for many years. More about Harry later later in my blog.
On Saturday, October 3, 2015 was the same as yesterday, cold, rain and windy. Again Ralph got dressed, his guns ready, we drove to the range and again he looked out the clubhouse's large windows that overlooked the range. Nope, not today he said! With him withdrawing from competition yesterday, he wouldn't really be in the running for placings, but he could have at least gotten some shooting in.
Of course there was more "friendly heckling" from his cowboy buddies, but he took it all in stride. After all his guns were dry and so was he. A total of 70 shooters had withdrawn out of 265 shooters.
We headed back to our rolling ranch house where we spent the day with one of our favorite shooting friends, Tom. He is a cowboy action shooter but did not enter this competition. He is a bachelor and a real sweetheart and we have always enjoyed his company. He came up to visit and have lunch with us and we had a nice time gabbing and catching up. He enjoys keeping in touch with us through our travel blog.
***A FUNNY STORY: Well this is for all my girlfriends who can relate and appreciate this. We have all been here with what I am going to tell you.
Each time we pulled out of our deep red clay quagmire of a parking spot and every time we came back to park, the ruts got deeper and deeper and slicker and slicker. As Ralph was pulling back in Saturday afternoon, he was heading for the same spot. I did not "tell him" but "suggested" in a nice about way, not to park in the same spot and he might want to go around on the other side of the tree." Well I guess this was one of the times he looked at me like I had "2 heads".
So he pulls in to the spot where we had been parking and the truck sank and we were stuck. Now you ask if I said "I told you so?" No I did not. I did not have to. He could hear inside that little man pea brain of his that I was saying "I TOLD YOU SO!"
Now we don't have 4 wheel drive and there is a reason why. We did not get it because of the extra money for the option, the extra maintenance and the big difference in fuel mileage and the rare times we would need it. We rarely go off road and never do while hauling the RV. We also have towing insurance if we get stuck.
In the almost 10 years on the road, this is the first time we had to be towed. Now we could have waited for a couple of days for the ground to dry out because we weren't leaving for a few days but Ralph wanted it out.
This 1966 John Deere 4020 Tractor was our tractor on the farm. We sold the gun club this tractor along with the bush hog mower when we sold the farm and left for our "full time adventure".
Chance is a cowboy shooter and one of the tractor operators of the club. He towed us out as well as several other trucks and RV's.
Sunday, October 4th, we just hunkered down and did not go to the last day of shooting or the awards ceremony.
Finally the rain stopped. Our shooting friends, Tanner, Bonnie Be Good and Jingles stopped by to visit us. My sister Florence came up to visit too and brought me my early birthday present, "blintzes". We grew up with blintzes, a recipe from my German grandmother (Grossmutter, in German). Florence makes them for me when I come back to visit.
***A FUNNY STORY: This is about these cheese blintzes. For years I always told Ralph they had spinach in them. Ralph does not care for spinach. (I don't know why, it has no taste and besides I put spinach in many dishes and he has eaten more spinach then he will ever know).
I am stingy when it comes to sharing my most favorite food. So this following story I am telling, well I was able to get away with it for years and I am not embarrassed about it.
I had never shared my blintzes with Ralph. One day when Florence came to visit us, she asked Ralph how he liked the blintzes. He said "I don't eat them because I don't like spinach". Well the cat was out of the bag! Oh did my sister shoot me a nasty look!
So many of you are asking if I share them now? Heck no! I just don't share my blintzes, but as I told Ralph, if we were in the ocean and our boat was sinking and we only had one life preserver, I would be sure Ralph got it. Food on the other hand is totally different.
Ralph driving our old John Deere 4020 tractor for old time sake.
During the week of Oct. 5th, we drove around town trying to visit as many of our friends that we had not seen yet.
When we had the horse boarding farm, we became good friends with many of the boarders. One person was Harry who boarded his Arabian horse, Tamar.
Harry was able to meet us for breakfast at Dunkin Donuts. Harry is a 70 something fella and who has always been a bachelor.. We always included Harry in our life and had him over for holiday dinners, cookouts and of course functions around the farm. He also took care of the horses and cats when Ralph and I went away.
Ralph and Harry
After Dunkin Donuts, we told Harry we were heading up to Rocky's Pizza to see the owners Tony and Tina. They are Italian's who came from Italy and they speak with the great Italian-American accents.
Harry is personal friends with them also, besides being their personal handyman at the restaurant. He said he would would follow us up there and visit them too, so we ended up extending our fun visit with Harry and had lunch together.
We go way back with Tony and Tina. When we had our farm, our Friday night ritual was to go with our friends and eat at Rocky's and then go to Eyler's horse auction. We had fun times there at Rocky's with Tina and Tony. Their son Vinnie, grew up and worked in his parents restaurant and we watched him grow up from a small boy.
Vinnie is now a policeman in town here and this is his little boy, his wife and Tony. Tony is a bit bundled up because he was unloading the refrigerator food truck.
One last goodbye. We stay in touch with Harry, Tina and Tony with our yearly Christmas Letters. We are lucky to have such special friends. I am sorry I did not get a picture of Tina who was busy making all their delicious Italian entrees.
We stopped in to visit our old dentist Dr. McCurdy who by the way I went to Jr. High with. We are also personal friends with his staff, Michelle and Suzy. They also receive our Christmas Letter and keep in touch.
I popped in one last time to see our old neighbor Pat and Wayne. She was my best horse riding buddy and we sure had fun adventures together.
***ANOTHER FUNNY STORY: We had been in Maryland for almost 5 weeks. Ralph was getting a case of "Hitch Itch". A term used by full time RV-er's when it is time to "giddy-up".
We have friends, Don and Doris who live in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Many years ago they use to live just 3 miles from our farm, but we did not know them at that point. Cowboy Action Shooting was not around at that time.
Years later when Ralph got into Cowboy Action shooting, we went to Cheyenne, Wyoming for the big annual match called "Hell On Wheels". Don who at this time got into Cowboy Action Shooting and was looking over the competitors list seeing where everyone was from.
He saw this shooter from Maryland, so Don called us up and said "Where in Maryland to you live?" We told them Frederick and the location of our farm and he said "I lived 3 miles from you in the White Rock subdivision". What a small world!
Well he came to the campground where we were at and he and his wife Doris and us became fast friends. Since then we have used their home as one of our "Stagecoach Stops" as we call it when we criss-cross the countryside.
Every October, Don comes "solo" to Frederick to visit his friends and this gives Doris quiet time back home in Cheyenne. Don called us and asked when we were hitching up because he was flying in on Oct. 7th, the day Ralph wanted to leave.
Well Don and I hatched a plan. I knew I could not talk Ralph into staying another day, so I told Don he needed to use his "Easy Button". Remember the commercial from Staples?" When the customers needed something done, they used their Staples "Easy Button" and Staples got their job got done for them.
Well I told Don I would call him when Ralph usually had his "adult beverage" sitting outside in the afternoon relaxing. When that happened, I texted Don on my phone and told him "It's a GO!" A few minutes later, Don called him and within minutes had Ralph talked into staying another night so we could see Don. When they hung up, I texted Don and said "Well that was Easy, you must have used your Easy Button". That was the one line sayings in the Staples commercial.
Well that afternoon, we met Don at Panera Bread and we had a wonderful time just chatting away for a few hours. After our nice meal we let the cat out of the bag and confessed to our hatched plan of attack. Ralph had a good laugh over it. Love the Easy Button!
On Thursday, October 8th, we hitched up and headed out to our next adventure! See you there!
Until then Happy Trails to everyone!
Always enjoy your blogs Angie!!
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