A Short Drive Took Us Far Away

Wow! What a weekend! This can be modified somewhat to say "Ouch! What a weekend!"

We had the best time. Friday we lunched with the Quipper's brother and girlfriend visiting from California. That was a nice surprise, as we did not expect we would be able to spend any time with them.

Then we drove down to Columbus, OH and checked in to the hotel . Once we had settled in our room we had to check out the hotel's athletic club. Very nice!!! They had machines I had never seen before. Of course, we had to try them. I'm not sure what my sweetheart did, but I started on a treadmill in my old, worn out tennis shoes. So I knew my shins would be sore the next day. (And they still are).

Then I moved on to the sauna to rub my shins and prep for laps in the pool. The indoor pool was perfectly lovely, and large enough that I could keep my own lane. I'm not sure how many laps I did, but I did enough in front crawl to have sore triceps. Then my sweetheart came down to the pool to tell me he was done. Back to the sauna (my favorite) and off to see where we might dine that night. The evening brought us to a comedy club at Easton Town Center. We had dinner at the Funny Bone Comedy Club and Cafe. The meal far surpassed both of our expectations. We had some really great food there. I would go there again, but not to see the same headliner. We saw Jason Russell and Louis CK. Jason Russell had us in stitches. We laughed constantly, the whole time, and we were pleased that he did not need vulgarity as a crutch. The club passed out free Louis CK CDs to everyone at the show. Ours will go in the trash. He was a trashy kind of guy so it will be right at home there.The Funny Bone, just starting to fill up.
We enjoyed our dinner!

Saturday was beautiful. The rain had stopped the evening before. We grabbed a quick bite for breakfast and Bob Evans and that made us appreciate our favorite local family restaurant, Victorio's, even more. Quality is the same and at Victorio's we get more food for less money.

Then we had an hour to kill before our appointment at Field of Dreams Stables so we drove around and looked at neighborhoods. We picked up fliers for several houses for sale in the area. The Quipper noticed that the annual taxes were more than our current annual mortgage!!!I loved the entry way on this house.

We got to the stables and began our hour long trail ride through thick forested area along Blacklick Creek. Our guide was an OSU Forestry major. The three of us wound through the woods and crossed the creek numerous times. It was so pretty and so peaceful. We did not see any wildlife but we saw deer tracks a few times. The only mare at the stables this summer! All the males were pretty feisty.The Quipper is riding 7 year old Cactus Jack. Sorry I chopped your head off in the one photo, dear!

I'm riding a 12 year old named Outlaw. We walked our horses in the arena while our guide got ready. Some scenes from the trail. You can see the banks are a good bit higher than the stream. Some of the descents/assents were steep and so muddy the horses had to take a running jump. That was quite a surprise the first time! The first surprise is probably why I am still so sore today. Outlaw did not like to get his feet muddy and he jumped more than the others. He also beat me up be leaving the path to avoid mud and ran my legs into the trees.

Coming tomorrow - the rest of the trip.