I am willing to work extra hard now while the weather is nice in order to slow it all down a notch during the coming winter months. I was keeping that in mind when we drove and drove and drove last week. LA to Louisville, Louisville to Dallas and back to Louisville in less than 24 hours, and then down to Kissimmee, Florida. That got us up to Friday and by that time we were pretty much exhausted. We told our dispatcher to give us a couple days off over the weekend to recharge the batteries and he obliged. Bright and early Monday morning we were at the Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Florida making a pick-up. We drove onto the base and had to be escorted way out around to the other side of their runways where they loaded some big crates onto the trailer. The cool part of that trip to Tyndall was sitting there while one plane after another whizzed down the runway for take-off. Of course my camera battery was on empty but we did enjoy hearing the sound of freedom and our tax dollars at work! Then off we went to Pennsylvania. We will deliver in the little town called Tobyhanna at an army depot in the morning. We’re not sure what’s on our agenda next but it looks like possibly a trip to Utah. We’ll know for sure soon.
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The extra day for the Labor Day weekend also added an extra day for our delivery schedule this week. It was nice because we could really take our sweet time getting to our first delivery near Durango. This is a beautiful little town in southwest Colorado just north of the New Mexico border. We used to take the backroads just for a change of scenery from the interstate. Now we take the backroads because we have to. In fact this delivery was down a dirt road out to this little coal mine. We delivered some steel and metal that they use to reinforce the ceiling of the underground mines. It was our first trip ever to this part of Colorado and the views were spectacular. The next stop the following morning was in Casper, Wyoming – about 12 hours due north. The best part about that was the state highway we had to take to work our way up to Denver. It was one mountain pass after another and around every curve a different view. I won’t bore you with the hundreds of pictures I took but will include several of them. Here are a few new road signs we've never seen on our trips before. One letting us know how steep the hills were and the other one to alert us to the switchback curve ahead... as if we couldn't tell. We drove thru one cute little old town called Pagosa Springs and had lunch at a wonderful Mexican restaurant. We were chilly sitting out on their terrace while watching all these people in swimsuits just across the little river from us sitting in the natural hot springs. Too bad we were on a tight schedule that day or we could have joined them. Here is a view of that neat little town. We put this on our list of places we'll come back to visit some day -- in a car! The next morning we delivered in Casper and decided to hurry up and get done with the last stop in San Jose, California. If we could hustle it over there we could also avoid some of the worst rush traffic in the country... the San Francisco Bay area. According the GPS it was twenty-one hours of driving from Casper but thankfully we made it there with a few hours to spare. With that trip behind us, we were ready for the next adventure. So yesterday we picked up a container full of automotive parts at one of the California ports. It needs to be delivered in this little Kentucky town of Harrodsburg on Monday morning. That means today is a traveling day, as most of them are these days. Sounds like they have us planned to pull some UPS freight to Dallas once we get done with this so we are really people on the move! We have been busy little truckers this week. We pulled our first oversized load, complete with those big yellow oversized load banners and several red flags. I guess we accepted that one before we even realized what it was or we may not have done it. Not that it was any more difficult but there are so many rules and regulations that go along with something like that. We waited over 24 hours just to get the necessary permits from the two states we were driving it thru. Then a few more hours to get the city permit that would allow us to go the two miles from the shipper to the interstate! Who knew there was so such involved with that? Needless to say, we were glad to have that load - another big a/c unit- in the books. From there it was up to Keyport, Washington where we were instructed to pick up a load of empty torpedo casings from a submarine base there. We've come to really like the military loads because they are mostly light and therefore we get better fuel mileage because of it. We averaged 9 mpg all the way across the country to Virginia Beach. This might sound low but it is actually excellent when you consider we're a semi truck pulling a load over the ups and down of the Rocky Mountains. This load also gave us our first experience at what we "flatbedder's" consider our worst nightmare - tarping. I have to say we did pretty well for our first time at it. We now find ourselves looking at all the other trucks going down the road and critiquing their work and hopefully learn from what the others are doing. One thing we have been blessed with is good weather on loading days. So even though we’re still in the learning phase of this job, the weather has been ideal. I keep reminding Jorge how one of these days our new-found strapping and tarping skills will be put to the test with cold weather, snow, and even worse – wind. I’m sure those tarps are going to make great sails one of these days. After that delivery in Virginia Beach, we had one day off to recuperate before we loaded up again yesterday. This time we are combining a couple small loads that were picking up in the east and will spend next week dropping it all off at various locations in the west. We started in a little town called Farmville, North Carolina and are winding our way to San Jose, California – via stops in Virginia, Colorado, and Wyoming. This week’s highlights included: - Beautiful scenery from west coast to east coast. - Just missing out on both earthquake and hurricane in the east. - A quick stop in Winona, MN to visit my step mom, Gerry, getting a good home-cooked meal and good memories of Dad as we sorted thru some of his things, including old pictures. - A stop in Franklin, TN today to pick up our new license plates we had sent to my mom’s house. That included a great lunch at the famous Loveless Café with her and Joe. We love our job! |