The amazing people you meet

It has been a very serendipitous time for us this past week, and one that personally reached a serious low at one point (mainly to do with difficult times we are having back in the UK), but I am happy to say it recovered well by the end of the weekend, leaving us once again in ever optimistic mood that we generally thrive on.

Now I am not going to bore you with the details of our woes; suffice it to say when we think of all the good things we have and have experienced on the road to date, we realize just how lucky we are.

One such realization is when we look back on our trip and at some of the people we have met along the way, and thank the stars that we are fit and healthy, and able to do what we love.
Remember last week I mentioned something about the ABC television show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition-" Well, I can reveal that during our visit to Vermont we were given an exclusive preview of the house built for little Louis Vitale and his parents, Louis Sr. and Sara. 

It was another of Betty-Jo's wonderful mystery tours and took us completely by surprise.

We had no cameras or video in tow, not even a notepad, which actually was just as well, as as Louis Sr. and Sara were contractually bound not to reveal anything about the house until after it airs on TV.

It was a particularly wonderful, moving and humbling experience to see Louis Jr. trying his best to communicate with us, and seeing all the wonderful paintings he had made hanging on the walls of the house.

He has quite a talent for painting, despite his severe handicap which leaves him barely able to crawl on the floor and needing mechanical assistance to breathe and to eat.

What is even more remarkable about the Vitale's story is that they decided to shun the show's standard offer of a vacation and instead chose to spend their week as volunteers at "David's House," a charity where sick children and their families can stay in comfort whilst receiving treatment at the nearby Childrens Hospital in Lebanon, N.H. (see davids-house.org).

The Vitales had stayed there when Louis Jr. was first born and they wanted to "give something back" by volunteering their services at the house.

If you want to know more about Louis and his fellow artists, or you know of someone who is in a similar situation and would like to join this unique group, visit angelboyart.com. Bid on one of Louis' paintings if you like, and get to help some needy children at the same time.

Forever the wandering gypsies, we continued to move on in our travels and turned up on the doorstep of Annabel Sattler's home and stables in Hapsfield, Mass.

Annabel is an absolutely charming young lady from Germany who has settled over here with her partner, Jim, who unfortunately was away on business at the time, but she loves horses and currently has four that she tends to in between long shifts as the manager of a top hotel in the area.

We came across Annabel pretty much by chance over the Internet, but it turned out to be a wonderful, albeit brief, stop for us on our tour of "New England", and we went on a couple of good long trail rides with her and a friend of hers across the pumpkin patches and potato fields of Massachusetts.

It was quite unusual to see all the houses in the town neatly laid out along the road like any good suburb, but with almost all of them having big barns and pastures sitting behind them.
Most of these were old tobacco barns where the tobacco plant was harvested and left to dry, before being processed and packaged.
We hope to stay in touch with Annabel, as it was fun to have our "European evenings" at the local restaurant in town where the food was good, plentiful and reasonably priced, and we could swap stories on our experiences in America so far!

After a few days, we said goodbye to Annabel and her stables and headed up to Maine. Until next week...

David and Anita Hasbury-Snogles are British residents riding across the United States on horseback to raise money for charity. Visit HorseQuestUSA .org for more information. David can be reached at david_hasbury@ yahoo.com.