It’s been a whirlwind visit here in Las Vegas.We hit the ground running when we got here between prepping for my brother’s surprise birthday party, quickly followed by all the last minute things to get ready for Christmas.We had lots of family coming and going.My niece Allison came up from California and my mom brought her fiancé Joe (wedding to occur next month) from Tennessee.We had a houseful for a few days.In between a couple trips to the casinos, we managed a trip to the Hoover Dam, a lunch at the top of the Stratosphere for a great view of the Las Vegas valley, and a viewing of the overhead lights at the Fremont Street Experience.We will take off the rest of the week here to recover from all the excitement.This Saturday, January 1st, we will head to San Francisco from here and will stay on the road until May.We have a couple cold months ahead and possibly many miles of treacherous winter driving to boot. We're just grateful we missed the big blizzard in the east this week.I’m already wishing for spring.
Here’s a bunch of pictures we took over the past few days.
As we saw the big snow storm coming to the Midwest, we fretted a bit about our trip from Charlotte to Chicago last weekend.As it turned out, we were the last truck to get loaded and by the time we left Charlotte at three o’clock Monday morning, the snowplow crews had pretty much done a fantastic job of cleaning the roads up for us.We heard warnings from other drivers who had left before us about the slippery Kentucky roads with jack-knifed trucks.Our only problem was the Tennessee roads and as soon as we hit the Kentucky border, it was smooth sailing for us.We made it up to Chicago with time to spare.It wasn’t the snow that bothered us but the cold temps were almost unbearable.The windchill that night we stood out there backing our truck and trailer into this little alley was -19.As much as I could hardly stand it, I really felt for poor little Rocky.
Once we finished with that trip, we headed to Kalamazoo, Michigan to pick up our next load.It was a loaded trailer for the show Wicked that needed to get to Tucson, Arizona.No problem – we were more than willing to head south and to warmer temps.We drove the 1900+ miles nearly non-stop and were rewarded for our efforts with temps in the 80’s.
Our work is done until the end of the year.We decided to take some hometime and will be hanging out in Las Vegas until New Year’s Eve weekend when we are scheduled to be in San Francisco.Let it snow – we won’t have to drive in any of it until January.
Merry Christmas to all my friends and family!
This is never a good view from our office window. I took this picture just north of Knoxville, Tennessee on our way to Chicago.
We were happy to see the sun come out and see the more beautiful side of the snow storm.
We love our job! We delivered the show to the theater in Durham, NC on Tuesday and have until Sunday night to occupy our time with anything we’d like.We only had to drive about two hours down to Charlotte, NCbut other than that, what are a couple truck drivers to do? Some things we accomplished - we finished up our Christmas shopping, wrapped gifts, and found a little post office to ship it all off around the country.Work has begun on Christmas cards as well.Mostly we have just relaxed, watched television, and surfed the web.Does truck driving get any easier than this?We do have challenges ahead for the weekend as we take the next show from Charlotte up to Chicago.We’re thinking it’s cold here but apparently it’s nothing compared to what we’re going to find in the Midwest when we get there Monday.
Speaking of surfing the web, a friend of mine recently asked me how I can find so much to do on the computer. This is a perfect example of how I while away the hours and entertain myself on these days we have to wait while a show plays. As usual, when we have the time we check the map for a back road, get off the interstate, and take a route we have never travelled before. Not only is the trip more scenic, most of the time the roads are smoother too. That’s what we did yesterday.One thing we were watching for is cheaper fuel.We can always get a better deal at a mom and pop store than the big commercial truck stops.We saw a good price at a station as we zoomed thru Concord, NC but were going too fast to make stop so we broke our own ‘never go back’ rule and found a place to turn around so we could take advantage of the good price. However, the point of my story is not the price of the fuel, but what we saw when turned down a side street to make the u-turn.Across the road from the fire department that we turned around in, we noticed several huge old abandoned buildings that looked like a backdrop from a horror movie. There must have been five or six of these huge brick structures that had been boarded up, dilapidated, and were somewhat overgrown.What in the world was this place, we wondered - possibly an old school or college, a state hospital facility, or even a prison? It was all very eye-catching but we saw no signs around to explain what we were looking at.So I snapped a couple quick pictures and took to the internet to figure it out while Jorge took off to fuel. My curiosity was piqued.I’ve heard you cannot trust Wikipedia on a lot of things but it, along with many other websites, did clarify the answers to my many questions.As it turns out, these grand old buildings we had happened upon were what remained of an old detention center for white, male juvenile delinquents of the early 1900’s.They called the place the “Stonewall Jackson Training School”.Wikipedia had this to say about it…
"Boys were generally incarcerated for relatively minor scrapes with the law, including school truancy. At the school, the young men lived in a series of dormitory style buildings, and received an academic education as well as learning a trade. Students worked in industries including shoemaking, printing, barbering, textiles, and a machine shop. Many of the young men worked on the school’s farm, learning modern agricultural techniques, and maintaining the fields and cattle herds that supported the school. The print shop produced a small newspaper called The Uplift."
By the time I was done reading about it, I had learned quite a bit about the people who had lived there and this place I had never heard of before and will probably never see again.I just wish we hadn’t travelled so far past it so we could have gone back for a second, more thorough peak at the place.It was sad to see what had once been such fine architecture crumbling and no longer useful.Check out the picture I took from the truck window.It happens to be the exact same two buildings that I found on a picture from back in the day. So it’s not just sitting around, this job is an excellent learning experience as well.
This is obviously the picture that I took. What I first noticed was how the front of the building on the right was complete covered by trees and ivy. There were several more buildings nearby that looked very similar.
This is a picture of the very same two buildings that I found on the web.
I checked to see if I could find a copy of the the newspaper they published and found this issue from 1909 - over one hundred years ago. I don't know what the contents of the publication were but the paragraph on the front is showing off what was then their brand new dormitory. lt is also the very same dormitory that's overgrown in the picture I took above.
It’s time to get caught up on the past couple weeks.It’s not like I haven’t had the time to do it.We drove from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania from Schenectady, New York on some serious back roads of Pennsylvania and New York. I love to go thru all the little towns along the way. We got there just in time for Thanksgiving and as truckers had the advantage on the Black Friday shoppers since we parked in the mall parking lot overnight. All I had to do was roll out of bed and into the mall bright and early in the morning.We saw our first snow of the season there as we toughed out the cold temps, knowing our next destination would be Florida. We brought ‘White Christmas’ to Tampa last weekend.While in the Tampa area we are lucky enough to have family (my sister Linda) and friends (our fellow Clark drivers, Don and Dale) to visit and so we did both.Wouldn’t you know we brought the cold with us? It was funny to see the Florida locals all bundled up with hats, scarves, and boots complaining of the cold although to us it was still nice after our time up north.We did enjoy a couple of nice days though and our hearts went out to all the drivers stuck in the lake effect snow on the roads in New York. We got out of there just in time.
There’s been a couple schedule changes made but we’re in Orlando this weekend picking up ‘Young Frankenstein’.It will be a short little trip to Durham, North Carolina and back to the cold. Might as well start the winter and get it over with.
This would have been my dad’s 79th birthday so I’m especially remembering him today.I miss him so much.
The pictures below were taken as we cruised thru the little towns and rural areas of northeast Pennsylvania. It's typical for the homes to be so close to the busy roads. We also saw alot of Christmas tree farms gearing up for the upcoming season. There is the obligitory picture of Rocky modeling his new sweatshirt and another I took of this cool palm tree at the theater in Tampa.
Thanksgiving is nearly upon us and I have a lot to be thankful for… especially this week.I’m first of all thankful that we were NOT out west where the snow was piling up in the mountain passes.We have tire chains but we sure don’t want to use them.I’m thankful we weren’t in Minnesota for the ice storms.Snow is bad but driving on ice is worse.We did drive from Hartford to Gary, Indiana with an empty trailer.After dropping that off we had time to kill before we had to be in St. Louis so we drove a little further south down to Carbondale, Illinois and spent a couple days visiting my son, Danny.For some reason, we hardly ever cross thru there even though it’s not far from I-57.It’s just not a busy interstate.It was good to spend some time with him and get lots of errands run while he was at work.I started my Christmas shopping too.I figured as long as we were there, I’d wrap up his gifts and save myself the cost of shipping them later.Then it was on to St. Louis where we picked up ‘South Pacific’ Sunday night and had it delivered to the Philadelphia theater by Monday afternoon – a quick little 900 mile trip. Then back to Harrisburg with the empty trailer.Next stop is Schenectady, New York.We’ll be between here and there for Thanksgiving.
I can’t believe I forgot to take pictures while we were at Danny’s house this week… even when his girlfriend, Nicole, came just before we left and we went out for a nice dinner at the steakhouse, I forgot.Come to think of it, none of the pictures I did take were ‘keepers’ this week.Instead, I’m posting one of my favorite YouTube videos… from the old Johnny Cash show.It’s kind of long but it’s the end of it I really like… my favorite trucking song and namesake of this blog – Sailors on the Concrete Sea.To us truckers, the video of the old trucks is awesome. Most of the companies he lists in this old song aren’t even in business anymore. I could never have done this job without all the comforts of home like the old seasoned truck drivers did.We have a refrig/freezer, microwave, satellite radio and TV, computers, cellphones, a back door, and the truck’s greatest feature - a bathroom and shower.It’s just part of a long list of things we are thankful for this year.Happy Thanksgiving to all my family and friends!
We left Connecticut on Friday and are back here again on Monday.In between we made a quick little run down to Greenville, South Carolina to pick up ‘White Christmas’ and bring it back to Hartford. I could have stayed longer down south as the weather was gorgeous and so were the trees.They were still enjoying fall down there.
We didn’t get too much sitting around time this week because the dispatchers kept finding work for us to do - little things like run this over to New Jersey or take that to New York City.We were two blocks from our destination in Manhattan to pick up some scenery from that Victoria Secrets show and were already patting ourselves on the back for a successful navigation into the city when we ended up running into the tail end of the New York City Veteran’s Day parade.Don’t you know they had the road we needed to complete our trip closed!Jorge was so good at making a few unexpected twists and turns with the help of New York City’s finest and we finally made it to our pickup location.One of the guys loading the truck that day was amazed at the size of our truck.He made a comment that it was bigger than the room he rents.Of all the places we go in this big country, I think that is the one place I’m always glad to have behind us.
We are dangerously close to New York City so I’m hoping they don’t find something for us to do down there as long as we’re up in this area.Otherwise, the next stop on our tour is St. Louis.Since we don’t have to be there until next Sunday, we should have extra time to swing thru Southern Illinois and visit my son, Danny.We just don’t get thru that way often enough.It’s time to see what he’s been up to.
It’s been a busy week of driving.We did get to that election party as we’d hoped but disappointment abounded when the majority of Nevadans didn’t agree with our choice for senator.Otherwise we’re happy with most of the results.
It was back on the road the following day, and after doing what I refer to as some necessary ‘grunt work’ in LA moving trailers from one parking lot to another, we hooked up our load and started for New York.It did seem like a long ride and I suppose at 2900 miles, it’s one of the longest a truck driver can do.We left early Friday morning and arrived at our destination Monday afternoon.Highlights of the trip included a little breakdown in the middle-of-nowhere Arizona which was quickly remedied with a little fuel, dinner at a favorite BBQ joint in Amarillo, and a stop at our storage trailer in Englewood, Ohio where all our earthly belongings will stay until further notice. It’s nice to be able to drop off an item or two we may pick up during our travels or grab something we may need from there.It’s like going shopping but it’s it is all your own stuff and it seems new since we haven’t seen it in quite awhile.
It will be a couple days of relaxation here in the Hudson River Valley when on Friday we are going to do a little run down into the heart of New York City again.Apparently there is a Victoria Secrets show that is finishing up and we’ll take one of many trailers full of equipment back from whence it came in Connecticut before heading down to Greenville, South Carolina for the weekend.We keep hearing of unseasonably warm temps west of here but so far, we’re not seeing them.There is actually quite a bit of color still left in the trees here in New York.It looks like fall but feels like winter.
I take so many pictures from the driver's seat it's not even funny. Most of them I end up deleting when they're out of focus, too many bugs on the windshield, crooked from trying to take a shot too quickly before i pass it, etc... We've been up and down these roads so many times but I can still find things that interest me, or I maybe I haven't seen before, or maybe just look extraordinary in a different light of day. That's what these pictures are this week... just things I see from my office window.... a Texas field of cotton ready to be picked, trees that have been so windblown in Oklahoma that even on this rare calm day they still lean from just naturally growing that way, one of many windmills- some working but most aren't- that dot the plains, and an Illinois fisherman relaxing on a lake while truck drivers go by and take pictures of them. Just another day in the life of a truck driver!
When we left Omaha, Nebraska to come to Winona for a week- long visit, little did we know we’d end up staying another week so we could attend my father’s funeral.Dad came home from the hospital to start his hospice care on the same Tuesday we got into town.We helped set up the living room to accommodate his hospital bed, oxygen, and other things we’d need to keep him comfortable.He was excited to get home and was in pretty good spirits in spite of it all.Since he wasn’t able to get much sleep at the hospital, he was pretty exhausted that first day and so he slept all afternoon and evening.It came time for the rest of us to go to bed and he was still sleeping so we decided not to wake him up but just let him sleep.I was lying on the couch right next to his bed so I figured if he needed anything, I’d hear him.Sure enough about 1am, he woke up wide awake.Then he said to me, ‘Hey, are you sleeping over there?’I wasn’t anymore.Dad was awake for several hours and I sat with him to keep him company.He wanted to watch a western movie on TVbut couldn’t since that channel apparently didn’t play 24 hours.So we watched an online church service from a nearby WELS church in Bangor, WI.Since Dad could no longer attend services, he’d started listening to them online.That pastor even said a prayer for him and he was happy to hear it.We talked and talked, and about 4am, he told me to open the curtains so we can watch the sunrise.(I’m sure he’d lost all track of time and didn’t realize it would be a few more hours before we’d even see that.)After some time he fell asleep and so I went back to my place on the couch and got some much needed rest too.Around 7am he called me again, ‘Hey, are you awake over there?’I woke up to see what he was going to need.He told me I need to close the curtains so I could sleep and he didn’t want the sun to get in my eyes!Those were precious last hours with my dad that I’ll treasure always.He was on a steady decline the rest of the week and thankfully a team of angels came swooping in early on Sunday morning, October 24th, and relieved both him and us from his further suffering. He had church in heaven that morning.
It was a crazy time of planning arrangements and a whirlwind week with basically two funeral services and finally his burial at his old church in Monroe, Michigan last Thursday. The whole family and so many friends came together to celebrate Dad’s Homecoming.
The strife is o’er, the battle done; The victory of life is won; The song of triumph has begun: Alleluia!
We left Winona yesterday and got back on the road again.It’s a huge relief to us knowing that Dad’s health is not the big looming question mark it once was and we no longer worry about what is happening with him while we’re running around the country hither and yon .We are bobtailing (trucker talk for not pulling a trailer) all the way to Los Angeles this week and we’ll be stopping at my brother’s house in Las Vegas tomorrow night for what we hope is a ‘Fire Harry Reid’ party while watching the election returns.From there we pick up that ‘Phantom of the Opera’ trailer in LA and take it up to New York.So we’re back in the saddle again…
Remembering the best father a girl could ever have…
Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in him and not be afraid. For the Lord is my stronghold and my sure defense, and he will be my Savior.” Psalm 31
I love this time of year for the beautiful trees and just the smell of the fall leaves.After we got our trailer where it belonged in Cleveland, we took some country roads we’d never been on and worked our way toward our next pickup in Detroit.The trees were at their peak with impressive colors.We had a chance to stop in Toledo for a quick visit with family over pizza before we went back to work in Detroit.
We took ‘West Side Story’ on its first move – destination Omaha, Nebraska.Once it was over and done, we were supposed to wait with the show while it played there all week.Instead, we chose to drive the 380 miles over to see Dad in Winona, MN. We will head back on the weekend and take the same show out to San Francisco.
Dad and Gerry made the tough decision last weekend, after he ended up in the hospital, to begin hospice care for Dad’s last days.Although he surely must have had this lung cancer for some time, we weren’t made aware of it until he was diagnosed in August.The doctor told us at that time he estimated Dad had six months to two years of life left.I thought at the time he said it that the doctor was being generous.Dad’s health is now failing quickly and so we’ve spent the week here in Winona first setting up their house with a hospital bed and oxygen in the living room, then doing anything or everything we could to make sure he’s comfortable now that he’s back home.Thankfully he isn’t having insufferable pain but not being able to breathe is just a different kind of pain… and painful for us to watch as well. My father's days are numbered and his heavenly mansion is getting the finishing touches put on.
“And they that turn many to righteousness (shall shine) as the stars forever and ever.”Daniel 12:3
Combining a love of travel and history, not to mention the need to work and fund those travels~ we found the perfect solution to satisfy our wanderlust ~ as over-the-road truck drivers. The nomadic lifestyle is surely not for everyone but it has worked well for us for several years. It has taken us to countless places we would never have gone and we've met many friends along the way. Join us, Jorge and Rhonda ~and Rocky, the trucker dog ~ in our adventures on our perpetual, mobile camping trip...