Warning: High Levels of Sodium

Here's the picture I promised of the salt pile. This was at a salt mill on the north side of the Great Salt Lake near Ogden, UT off of I-15. There were many piles of salt there, but we loaded off of this particular pile. The stream of salt coming out of the auger was continual. The salt we picked up went to a DOT salt shack in Saint Maries, ID for the road department to use on the roadways during the winter. However, don't fool yourself. I beleive your table salt was in another pile like this one, sitting out in the open on the ground, with the sea gulls flying overhead.

As you drive along I-80 on the south side of the lake you pass two other salt mills. One is Cargill, which is the major beef packing company in the country. We've delivered cows to several of their kill plants, as well as picked up processed beef when we drove for PRIME, INC.
The other mill is Morton, with the cute little girl with the umbrella posted up on their building so large you can see her clearly from the interstate. She has a particularly large pile of salt sitting next to her.

Don't be fooled about the size of this.....there was a large front end loader driving around on the top of the hill leveling it out, if that gives you any indication. And if you don't know what a front end loader is.....well it looks kind of like a bull dozer.

Ok, on to greener pastures. We're loading in Missouri this morning, well barely in Missouri. We came in last night through Illinois, from the opposite direction our directions were from, because I didn't know we were coming in this way when I got the directions from the nice lady. SO...we were coming in on back roads from the east, and it got dark, truly was a lovely drive up till the darkness, and we're trying to interpret the directions...backwards.... and we get to Chester, IL, which is a little town on the river just before you cross into MO. And we're on this highway, but when you get into town our GPS said turn on this little side street, even though the road signs said 150 went straight. I said turn, Malcolm said straight. We went straight....even though we had to stop for TWO semi's to turn out of that little side road. And so we went straight, and 150 dissappeared and we turned down another little side road that the GPS said would take us back to 150. Almost ran over a fire hydrant, had trees dragging the top of the truck, went down a steep hill that for all the world looked like it woudl catch the hoppers and drag them, made the turn and were met with a dead end sign.....no highway 150. So there we are, in a run down little neighborhood, no where to turn around, tree branches dragging along our roof, and the neighborhood running out to move their cars off the street, because apparently this is a common problem....there were semi tire marks on the cement, and the neighbors seemed to know what to do to save their vehicles. We backed up, crawled out of there with our tails tucked, made it back around the fire hydrant, and took the little side road that looked rediculously small and...tada.....we were on 150. Kudos to Malcolm for being an excellent driver and not destroying the town or us. Curses on you, Chester, IL, for not posting a few signs like "150 turn here," or "truck route," or "NO TRUCKS." Seriously, it looks like it happens frequently. They need to do something.

Anyway, it felt like old times (not the good ones) when we drove for Covenant and were ignorant young truck drivers up in the northeast getting into all sorts of sickening, make you want to hide under the covers so you can't see, kind of events. Like the night we got lost in Queen's NY...actually that was with Prime. Ahhh...the memories.

But here we are in Missouri, a few yards from the river and that wretched town, but it already feels more open. Like we parked on the side of the road last night, and this morning we pulled up alongside this cornfield...so OPEN and peaceful.

And now we're loading and going to Texas....back to the land where EVERY road is truck friendly.

Hope you all have a great weekend.