I'm dog sitting in Maine, alone in my trainer's new house with 4 dogs, a cat and a tank full of fish (by my trainer, I mean the person who I was a working student for, on a horse farm in Virginia, who I spent two summers training under). After a Christmas appearance at my parents' house, I spent the next day traveling to get up to Maine. It's only a 7 hour drive in a private car, but cobbling together buses and trains makes it a full 13 hours.
I got to the frozen north well after dark, found my trainer's truck that she left in the parking lot, got the keys from the wheel well, and proceeded to poke my way through the dark Maine suburban streets. I fought with her huge dually pickup truck the whole way. It was a stick shift, and I'm not completely proficient at standard. It was a nerve wracking experience, but I forced myself to keep at it. I finally found the right house, and happily left the truck parked (haphazardly) in the driveway. I was about as happy to stop driving as the 4 dogs were to finally get their dinner.
The next day I fell into a pattern of vacation: wake up at 7:30am (impossible to sleep later, with the doggies breaking down the door, asking for breakfast), read a bit, watch some TV, take the dogs for a hike through the snow (with my new snowshoes) for the rest of the morning, come back, eat lunch and relax, and do some mild excursion in the afternoon.
Over the course of the week, I went hiking at state parks, saw a movie by myself (literally: there was no one else in the theater), read two books, watched an entire season of a new TV show, noted it was New Years Eve, made cookies and went to the LL Bean outlet. That's my idea of a vacation.
The dogs were great, the weather was decent (only snowed a couple times, it got into the high 20s on multiple occasions), and I finally got the hang of the truck.
