Michelle and I arrived in Ocala yesterday, and today we’re headed to the YEH/FEH symposium at Grand Oaks. We had a dinner last night at the Holekamp’s, but since our flight was so early, we had all afternoon to kill. What do you do in Ocala when you’ve got a spare 6 or so hours? TACK SHOPS. Because there are like a dozen of them.

We were so well-behaved, we started at the consignment store.

Michelle found a few shirts there, but nothing caught my eye. I was so good.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

Then we went down the street to Tack Shack of Ocala. Again, we were trying to be reasonable, so we started in the building with the big clearance section. Again, Michelle found a few things (a halter and a couple shirts), but nothing spoke to me.

And then we went over to the main building. I was doing pretty well until I wandered into the bell boot section. Then I thought, “Ooo, I actually do need some new bell boots for Henry, the ones I bought him at Bundes are dying.”.

And I found some pretty navy fake leather ones.

Apparently bell boots are a gateway drug, because then I spiraled. Half an hour later I staggered up to the counter in a stupor, plopping down a sunshirt, some gloves, a new whip, and the bell boots. Michelle was loaded down with halters in a variety of baby sizes, so I didn’t feel quite so bad.

After that we headed to lunch, where we watched horse racing on the TV’s at the bar while we ate. There’s a lot to be said for being in a horse-centric town.

And hey, what do you know, there was another tack shop in the same shopping center! What a hardship. Michelle came out of that one unscathed, but they had cheap stud plugs so I bought literally all of them.

We passed by a huge farm supply store, so we stopped in there because why not, and as soon as we stepped in the entry Michelle saw these:

She gasped and literally SHOVED ME OUT OF THE WAY to get to them and snatch up two bags. Now SHE was spiraling.

We headed back up toward where we were having dinner and passed by a big used trailer dealership that had a ton of head to heads (what Michelle has been shopping for) but they had just closed. But… there was a little gap in the fence… so… we let ourselves in to look around in all the trailers. They had left them all open, so it seemed like an invitation to me. Just forget about that whole fencehopping part.

Once we got back to the hotel after dinner we both laid out our acquisitions for the day.

I’m not sure how to determine a winner in this case. Is it the person who got less, or the person who got more?

Either way, it was a day full of horses, and we made some new friends, got some pretty new things, and had a good time. Today we get down to business!