We finished a good trip yesterday. Our route covered a bunch of new roads this week, including US 50 thru central Colorado. It's now on the 'must-go-back-to-in-a-car-someday' list. I cannot believe I have a job where I can see all this cool stuff and get paid to do it. I'm going to miss this someday if I ever retire! It was topped off with perfect weather to cross the Rocky Mountains. We successfully avoided the high mountains all winter and it was good to be back in time for their blooming spring. I took a couple hundred pictures on this very scenic trip from southern Texas to northern Utah. I'll post a bunch of them below.
Here we are in Salt Lake City. It was chilly up here today and the tips of the Wasatch Moutains have a new dusting of snow on top. It's hard to find a prettier moutain range than these. As it turns out we're spending the weekend here and enjoying a couple days off. After all the miles we've covered lately, it feels good to have nothing to do. There was a load we were supposed pick up here in SLC this morning and take to Wisconsin but it ended up getting delayed until Monday. That didn't upset us at all. We have been hearing the truck make noises again lately and it was a good chance to put it in the shop. Before the day was over, we were paying to have a new turbo installed on the truck. That's one of the more expensive repairs. Of course it couldn't be anything easy and cheap! We finished a good trip yesterday. Our route covered a bunch of new roads this week, including US 50 thru central Colorado. It's now on the 'must-go-back-to-in-a-car-someday' list. I cannot believe I have a job where I can see all this cool stuff and get paid to do it. I'm going to miss this someday if I ever retire! It was topped off with perfect weather to cross the Rocky Mountains. We successfully avoided the high mountains all winter and it was good to be back in time for their blooming spring. I took a couple hundred pictures on this very scenic trip from southern Texas to northern Utah. I'll post a bunch of them below.
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It has been some long, busy days since our vacation ended a week ago. Before leaving Brownsville we attended the best birthday party for a one-year-old that we've ever been to. Jorge's cousin Lulu and her husband, Henry outdid themselves with this one. You kind of had to be there to get the full effect but it was an amazing time and it was good to see almost everyone from the Texas branch of the family tree. Bright and early the next morning and to start our Monday, our vacation came to a screeching halt with a single phonecall from our dispatcher. A load was ready about five hours north in Houston and it needed to be near Miami, Florida the next day. It was a bit of a drive but we decided to do it. Boy did we ever have to scramble to pick it up on time! Once we loaded Monday evening, we drove nonstop all night and in less than 24 hours, we were delivering it in Florida. They were so grateful for our quick delivery that the people we delivered it to gave us a good cash tip! That's our first one with this company. We got some much needed sleep before loading the next day up near Daytona. There was a load of pumps that had to be in Indianapolis and we figured if we hurried, we could get it there overnight and still have time to get another load for the weekend. That's exactly what we did. So another night of nonstop driving and we were done with that. By Friday afternoon we were in Marysville, Ohio loading this great big roll of rubber belting that's heading down to Mexico. We're taking it as far as Laredo, Texas and should be there tonight, God-willing. By the time we get there, we will have made one huge circle around half the country country... again. Next week is already planned for us too. Another load of transformers is coming out of Laredo and going up to Provo, Utah. We'll make a couple stops at power plants along the way in Las Cruces, NM and a little town in central Colorado called Canon City. It promises to be a nice trip on mostly backroads~ which we love. We can really see the country that way. It was a long ride from Maryland, to Kansas, to Colorado, and eventually to south Texas this week. We had plenty of time to do it and that made it okay. We even had time to spend nearly a whole day at our storage trailer in Englewood, Ohio swapping out our winter stuff for more summer things. While I was okay with leaving the winter coats, hats, and gloves behind, I had to convince Jorge that we still needed a few warm blankets. Good thing because we've been using them most of the week. We found ourselves in Kansas City for Easter Sunday morning. We picked out a church to attend but needless to say there was no room for a loaded semi-truck and trailer in their parking lot. It didn't quite seem right that we couldn't get to church afterall. Instead, we spent the day day driving thru one of the most boring states (in my humble opinion) ~Kansas. We made our first delivery there on Monday morning and were in Denver, Colorado for the second delivery by that afternoon. Off to Laredo, Tx for the final stop and we would be done working for the rest of the week. However, we did experience a true miracle along the way. The road between Denver and Amarillo is one of those deserted highways with a few towns, a lot of deer, and mostly trucks trying to get from Point A to Point B. I drove thru there mysef one night this week and stopped for a couple hours of sleep before Jorge got up and finshed the trip. He stopped at a rest area just north of Lubbock to let Rocky out and as he did, he heard a serious air leak under the truck. Uh oh... time to get online and find the closest repair shop. (What did drivers do back in the day before there was such a thing as the internet and cell phones?) Turns out there was a Volvo dealer about 20 miles down the road. By the time we arrived, there was barely enough air left to drop the trailer and limp the truck to the door of the shop. After all those lonely miles we'd just come across without breaking down, what were the chances of it happening right there? We keep our guardian angels working overtime, don't we? A second miracle happened when they actually got a mechanic to fix it right away, and fairly inexpensively, and off we went down the road. Jorge is currently spending a couple days south o' the border visiting family and friends while Rocky and I are mostly just hanging out at a hotel here in Brownsville. I got up this morning and decided to get my hair trimmed a bit. That's not exactly what happened though. There was a breakdown in communication, I suppose due to the language barrier. I complimented the little Mexican lady who had started to cut my hair and told her that I liked her haircut. I guess she thought I meant that I would like MY hair cut the same way and she started right in on that. So... I ended up getting it cut alot shorter than I had wanted but oh well... it will be okay for the summer. Note to self ~ always get your hair cut from a person who speaks the same language! For the past couple of days I'd been complaining that my eye was hurting and Jorge kept telling me to go to the doctor. Yeah, like I have time for that! Well, this morning it was worse and since I had really no excuse, I decided to take Jorge's advice and found an urgent care clinic here in town. Turns out I have a case of pink eye! I don't think I've ever had that before. So now I'm nursing that with some eye drops and warm compresses. I don't even know how long it lasts but I hope it's gone soon. I've got things to do and I don't need this issue. We're not exactly sure of our exit strategy out of Brownsville yet. There are a couple different options and we'll should find out tomorrow what our next load is and and where it will take us. We'll roll wherever the four winds blow! Boy, I was not kidding when I said this truck could be the money taker! We spent our whole day in the Tucson generator shop last Friday. It didn't take long for the mechanic to determine the problem was with the $2500 part we had replaced on it just over a year ago. Just in time for it to be out of warranty, of course. Then we had to decide if we want to keep throwing money at this unit or should we buy a new one. When we learned the price of a brand new generator the size we need was over $10,000, we decided to take them up on the slightly used unit they had right there in their shop. The mechanic said he could have them swapped out in about four hours. Well those four hours came and went and we were still sitting there at the shops closing time. They had run into a few issues, including finding out the aluminum frame that holds the generator to the truck had multiple cracks in it. They agreed to work overtime for us, knowing we had to get back on the road on Monday. Even with all their efforts, they still weren't done and can you believe they came in on their day off the next day to finish everything up just for us? That's the kind of customer service that is rare to find these days. We finally left there Saturday afternoon, exhausted and poorer, and I was lamenting our bad luck. Jorge said it was actually good luck since they were able to find and fix the problem with the frame~ something we otherwise would have never found until it fell off the truck. I suppose I'll have to say something I rarely say... he's right. Our next load didn't pick up until Monday morning several hours away just to the west of Holbrook, Arizona. Getting there gave us a good opportunity to drive thru more of the beautiful Arizona backroads. We hadn't checked the map too closely and were surprised when we once again came upon the beautiful Salt River Canyon. It is amazing to see and coming from the other direction gave us a completely different view of it. The further north we went, the colder and more windy it got too. We ended up parking for the night when we stopped to get a few things at the grocery store only 30 miles from our pickup point. It seemed like a safe enough place to park... until we were jolted awake by the sound of a crash. We both jumped up to see what had happened. Here the wind had gotten one of the grocery carts rolling across the parking lot and it didn't stop until it plowed into the side of our truck and put a big scratch on it. I was right afterall... we are a magnet for bad luck! No wonder our friends call us the Murphy's! We're not all bad news this week. On the plus side, Rocky has recovered well from his ordeal at the vet last week. He did thwart all our many attempts to give him his prescribed medicene no matter how well we disguised it. He appears to have made a complete recovery without it at this point though. No more rawhide bones but one night he did bring us the little milkbone substitute and asked for peanut butter on that. Yep.. he's back to normal! That Arizona load was going to Virginia, which is where were are tonight. We unload this in the morning then will drive about 50 miles to Frederick, Maryland to get the next one. Back west we'll go as we make stops in Kansas, Colorado, and finally Laredo, Texas. That gets us close enough to Brownsville, Texas where we will take a few days off to visit with Jorge's family. We do get around, don't we? |