Disappearing Bucket List Items and lesson learned

Wild Horse seen from the driveway
 of the sanctuary

 I have written repeatedly that my bucket list is written down in a notebook. Unless I really do sell my house and live out of a car and a tent, realistically I could not do everything on the list. Still, I'm going to give it the old college try. The vacations I have gone on lately are places with multiple items I can cross off of my bucket list. When I went to Florida in the olden days of 2019, there were thirteen things I wanted to do. I managed to do twelve while catching a tarpon didn't happen. 

  Before I even go any further I want to clarify if I do something on my bucket list, it is not a "been there, done that, check,what's next?". I really appreciate the moment and try to soak it all in. It is far more important to me that I got to swim with manatees, easily two of the best hours of my life, than it is to say I swam with them. Moving on...

   One of the things I had hoped to so someday was to go on a pelagic boat trip in Monterey Bay on Shearwater Adventures. Debbie Shearwater ran these trips for years. She has been mentioned in many books and played by Angelica Houston in "The Big Year" movie. However, Debbie retired last year so I can't do that. I probably am a couple years away from any vacations to California anyway. Despite my disappointment, it was unrealistic I could have done that trip before she retired. There really wasn't much I could do. It is the following that I am kicking myself for...

   When Laurie and I went to South Dakota in 2016 one thing we wanted to do was see wild horses. There is a sanctuary south of the Black Hills that is home to wild horses. The horses had been born wild but rounded up and many were abused. The owner of this sanctuary took in as many as 600 horses and lets them roam free on his 40,000 acre ranch.

 

 Laurie and I went there after going to a working excavation site that has fossilized Wooly Mammoths. It was early afternoon and as we pulled down the driveway we had second thoughts. You could take a bus tour out to the horses, but for the two hours it was $60/ person. While on the driveway, we could actually see some of the horses feeding. We had already spent more money than planned and sixty dollars to see horses just didn't seem worth it. So we left.

    We had a great time on that vacation and I think we will go back again soon. There were other things on that trip we didn't do. So another vacation to South Dakota wouldn't be a carbon copy of the 2016 trip. There's a lot to do in that state, and you can't do it all on one trip. 

    I regretted not going on the bus tour almost from the moment we got home. There isn't any question that when we go back, seeing the wild horses is the thing I most want to do. I still want to sleep in the prairie of Wind Cave National Park, and I want to eat the ice cream at Mt Rushmore, but I really want photo ops of wild horses. Those bus trips take you right to herds of habituated wild horses. You can get pretty close to them. They are all different colors and the scenery is beautiful. I could have taken head shots and landscape photos with the horses in the foreground.

   EXCEPT!!!!! The Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary is no longer open to the public. I was online the other day during the storm fantasizing about being anywhere but my living room. So I went to the wild horse website just to look. I was curious if their tours changed, if the prices changed, and just daydreaming. On the website it said the Wild Horse Sanctuary is Private property and there is no public access. There was no word about Covid. There was nothing about suspending tours until it is safe. Plain and simple they no longer do tours. 

   This is crushing! I always thought I would get back there someday. To know that I can't sucks. To make things worse, I was there. I was in the driveway. I could have pulled out $120 that I am sure looking back, I wouldn't have missed. Lesson learned! 

So my advice if you are within arm's reach of something you really want to do, DO IT! It might not ever be within reach again. 

   On a positive note, even before I found out the sanctuary was closed to the public, I had learned from my mistake. As Laurie and I were driving through the Everglades in 2019 we stopped at the national park. There is a fifteen mile paved loop through the swamp. You can rent bikes and do the fifteen miles. Also, you have to pay the national park entrance fee. The entrance fee is thirty dollars and good for a week. Though we were just driving through. The bike rental was $9/hour. This would be an eighty four dollar bike ride. As we were sitting across the street from the park entrance, I remembered the regret of not paying for the horse bus tour. So we paid our fee and rented the bikes. It was worth  every penny. We saw tons of gators and wading birds. The trip through the swamp was awesome. 

As I write this, I think of the miss opportunity of being so close to the horses. I learned, the hard way, that some of the things on my list are out of my control so do them if you can. It is not just about how long until I kick the bucket.

One of the gators right next to the bike path.
At least I learned something