something learned.......

It seems like every time we go to the land, we end up learning something. This time we learned that we have to save our money for a LOT of gravel for the roads on the land. We woke up the day before the last day we were going to be there and it was pouring down rain. I mean "pouring". By the end of the day, we had gotten 4 inches. It rained and rained. We decided that we would still take the trip to Mussel Shoals as we had planned because even just taking a ride in the explorer would be better than sitting in the TT all day,while it rained. Chuck had driven over to the BNOE to get some meat that we had put in their freezer and on the way back home, as he was coming up our hill, he got STUCK! When you are stuck in that red clay...you are stuck! So, he goes to the barn to get the tractor to pull the explorer out. First, he looked under the explorer in the front to see if there was some way of hooking up the rope but there wasn't. The only way to do it was to put the trailer hitch on and tie the rope to that. The only problem was.....there were four trees right behind the explorer. So off to the barn he goes again to get the chain saw. Number one tree came down ok. No 2. ...came down and No 3 was little one so no problem. BUT! No 4!!!! was the biggest and the closest to the explorer. I mean just inches. He had to cut that tree just right for it not to land on the explorer. I could see it now....driving back to Florida with the back half of the explorer caved in. Well, he sawed...and then yelled " WATCH OUT, WATCH OUT". The tree didn't land the way it was suppose too....of course not. It fell six inches away but right behind the back of the explorer. The whole back of the explorer was covered with saw dust. It took some work to cut the tree up and get it to the sides of the road. Then, the fun began. I jumped in the explorer and Chuck tied it to the tractor. With it still raining, I was hanging out of the window, looking backwards ( not really good on my back that the chiropractor had finally got put back together again) so I wouldn't run into the tractor, Chuck pulled me out of the hole of muck. He unties the rope and I got two feet and get stuck again. This happened three times and I finally told him to just pull me the 1/4 mile down our driveway to the road. We finally got to a point to where I could turn the explorer around and was able to drive it off the land and over to the BNOE. Driving on that wet clay was like driving on ice. I was slipping and sliding all over the place. Hence we have decided that since we don't want to have to stay home every time it rains, we have to buy lots and lots of gravel to put down for traction on at least two of the roads on the land. We brought a whole lot of Alabama red clay back to Florida with us...that was stuck all under the explorer. I told Chuck that it made me sad to wash it all off. I felt like I had a piece of the land here in Florida with me.