Catching Up

Since our visit to the house at Thanksgiving, time has been dragging. Freight this year has slacked off significantly, or at least it seems to have. Probably a person would think that it was the holidays causing it, but really, we've kept moving through the holidays in years past. And talking to other drivers, we're hearing the same complaints. Slow freight, low rates, and boggled up loads.

 

Overall, it's working out alright, but we've hit a slump here and there that left us bored and cranky. We had a couple of loads rejected too and that's always frustrating because it wastes our time, even though we still get paid for hauling the stuff.

 

And we had a couple days, both Monday's actually, where a decent load couldn't be found and we wound up sitting all day twiddling our thumbs. Something we're not used to doing.

 

With all that, my motivation for blogging was down. You'd think with all that spare time I'd have been on it. Something to entertain myself with! But given the blah mood it brought on, and the fact that I've had my nose glued to my Kindle during every spare moment lately, as I've stumbled across some really good books, the blogging got neglected.

 

So it's time to play catch up.

 

Two weekends ago, we headed north out of Phoenix, spent the night at Las Vegas, and the next day drove up US93 through eastern Nevada.

There's a lot of vacant land out there. US 93 goes up through the Great Basin National Park. We take a short cut and go off 93 for a bit in order to stay going straight north instead of swerving east. So we miss the park itself, but the scenery on the rest of 93 is still admirable. I think the most striking things about the region are...

 

...the almost absolute emptiness. We passed through about 4 "towns" in about 300 miles.

 

And also the patterns in the mountain sides are quite interesting. With a lack of trees and really much any kind of vegetation, you can admire the geology of the area from your car window. There was a lot of activity here eons ago. You can tell the ground was busy moving around.

fascinated by that black stripe of rock running through the mountain

its hard to tell what was going on here. Earthquakes? Floods? Those swirling lines of rock could keep you guessing for quite a while.



We delivered northeast of Boise Idaho on Monday morning (Dec. 3) and then sat all day long waiting to see what would come up. And the answer was nothing. Finally, Monday evening, we got directions to head to Caldwell, ID (near Boise) to load apples in the morning.

 

So Tuesday morning we loaded up apples...

...and headed to an unexpected location. The times in the past that we've hauled apples, they either went to Petaluma, CA or to Wisconsin. But these apples went to a town near Grand Junction, CO.  There was, to my great surprise, several wineries, vinyards, orchards, and this little juice making company where we delivered. I never would have thought the arid climate in western Colorado could have supported fruit, but apparently it does.

 

From there, we bounced down to Monte Vista, where we were a couple weeks earlier, and loaded canola.

 

Back to Idaho, near Rexburg, for a Thursday morning delivery and then we went down to southern Idaho and loaded fertilizer.

 

Interesting frustration occurred in Colorado. Out of the blue, I got wrapped up in a massive allergy battle. Violent sneezing, itchy watery eyes, sniffles......in Colorado....in December! I was very aggravated, as the winter is supposed to be my time of allergy liberation. What was up with that? The allergies followed me all they way to Idaho and persisted in annoying me throughout the day on Thursday.

winter skies near Soda Springs, ID







In fact I didn't find relief until I climbed into the mountains of the Yellowstone area near the MT/ID state line. My allergies cleared up right about the time the tires started slipping and sliding around on icy roads. And by Yellowstone the freezing rain had turned to snow, and I was breathing clearly. I guess there was just enough dust and garbage in the air to make us allergy victims suffer. Clearly, it's a dry winter following a too dry summer.

 

Crossing into Montana was like flipping a switch. All of a sudden we found winter, and it's been following us around ever since. We were on snowy roads almost all the way to Billings, and past that, though it dried up, it was still bitterly cold.  By the time we got to North Dakota Friday morning with our fertilizer, it was 6 degrees and a heavy fog was just lifting, at least the fog that hadn't frozen to every surface available.

Frozen fog can be messy, but it sure is pretty!

w

Since the load of apples, things had run smoothly, but we hit another glitch in North Dakota. After unloading, we were going to take a load of flax to Ohio. But the trailer had to be washed out first which presented a huge problem.

First and foremost, the closest place to washout was 160 miles away, in the wrong direction, from our reload, which was only 20 miles away. And a bigger issue was that even if we could find a place to wash out, at 6 degrees, the trailer doesn't wash. It freezes. The broker asked if we could just sweep really really well, but they turned that request down. No washout, no load.

So we sat around in northern ND for most of the day, and finally towards evening we got a load of safflower from Fairview, MT and headed south towards Colorado. 600 miles and the whole weekend to get it done. So we took our time, played some, rested lots, and made the best of it.

 

I'lll tell you about the weekend in the next post.





Crossing the Rockies in Colorado

It felt good to be back behind the wheel this week. Not to say that I don't wish I was home, because there's always something I'm wishing I were home to do. But it felt good to be back at work too, being productive in other ways. And quite honestly, after the last few months of our lives being suddenly turned upside down, it was really nice to just do something "normal" and know that when we take off for our next break, we'll just be going home for a break, and not heading home to a giant chore. The clouds have cleared from over our heads and I'm glad life can just get back to normal now. No more stress, no more tension, no more chaos. Just living!

We left Chattanooga on Tuesday and took a short load down to north central Alabama. By short, I mean we drove 90 miles to deliver. That's really short for us. It was a "get me there" load, a time filler to get us down to the "real" load, which was chicken meal from Hanceville, AL to Flagstaff, AZ.

It's always a bit of a trial to start back to work with an all night run. We drove straight through to Arizona, arriving about 6 hours before our appointment. We used that time to take a much needed nap and get a decent meal because we knew as soon as we were loaded that evening, we had a long night drive to get to our next load.

I slept while Malcolm unloaded the trailer, drove north about 70 miles, and washed the trailer out. We parked for a couple hours there, and then I got up at 3:00am to finish the drive to our destination.

There are a number of routes across the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. All of them are scenic. You won't be disappointed no matter which way you go. If your in a hurry to get from point A to point B, then probably I-70 is your route to go, though even it has its slow going moments. Your going to have to count on twists and turns, ups and downs. Your crossing a huge mountain range after all!

We actually don't cross the Rocky Mountains that often. Our loads don't seem to take us that way much. We generally stay out of western Colorado. But on occasion we do have a trip that takes us there and it's usually kind of fun to get somewhere off our beaten path. Of the handful of times we've crossed, we seem to use US160 the most. And that was the case on Friday morning. It's on my list of "must drive" road trips for anyone who wants to know.

When I started early Friday morning, we were still in northern Arizona on US160. I followed it almost to the border where it cut north into Utah, but I kept heading east on a short cut, jumping across the northwest corner of New Mexico. At Farmington, NM we headed north, into Colorado, and caught back up with 160 just outside of Durango, CO at dawn.

Perfect timing! I had hoped to have sunlight to enjoy the scenery. God went ahead and gifted me with a dramatic sunrise to get me started.

We would spend our morning traveling US160 from Durango to Monte Vista, where we would be loading for our weekend trip. If you ever get the chance to drive this route, please take it! Trust me! It's worth it!

There was quite a bit of cloud cover on Friday morning, which worked with the mountains to keep the sun blocked, making photography a little difficult. You'll miss out on some fantastic scenery in this post because of that. Guess you'll just have to go see it for yourself!

From Durango, we headed east, passing through the San Juan National Forest.

Near Pagossa Springs, the road encountered the San Juan River and followed it into town. The temperature was down in the 20's and in town the hot springs were steaming. Unfortunately my camera couldn't get focused on them, so I had to stick with mountain vistas instead of hot spring steam.

East of Pagossa Springs we entered the San Juan Mountains. It seemed with each turn in the road, the snowy peaks just got more impressive.

At the base of Wolf Creek Pass it was neat to look up the mountain and see the road passing back and forth across the facade of the mountain as it climbed to the summit.

Half way up the western side of the pass, there is an impressive view of the valley below. I've seen it once in fall and it was amazing with all the Aspens all golden and the afternoon light making the valley floor glow. I've seen it once in summer when everything was green and fresh. And now I've seen it in early winter with it's first blanketing of snow.

Wolf Creek Pass, at it's summit, is 10,850 feet. I suspect it's quite an adventure to go over during the dead of winter, though I imagine it's well maintained since it's one of the main routes across the mountains.
I spent some time craning my neck trying to get a second glimpse of that spectacular view, but we were headed the wrong direction, and even though the road was twisting, it wouldn't quite twist enough. So I had to get creative to get a second look.

Over the pass and headed down the other side. On the eastern side, it's not quite as open as it was on the west. The mountains are more pressed in on each other and the road and river just slip between them.

It was also considerably more snowy on this side of the pass and onward. Each turn in the road revealed another great rock wall and snow covered shoulder. I think the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains must be the cause of the name.

It was during this part of the drive that we followed the course of the Rio Grande for a bit before it left the highway to head south through New Mexico and then on to the Mexican border. It was kind of strange to see that river up here in the mountains when I've always thought of it as the desert river that I see in El Paso.

Eventually the mountain passes opened up into a huge valley. It's so large at first I thought we were finished with the mountains, but then off on the horizon, I spotted the blue outline of a distant range. And then, looking around, I realized we were surrounded by ranges.

I didn't get a picture to truly depict the effect. There are moments when you have to look closely to see that it truly is a valley and not the beginning of the plains.

We had reached our destination of Monte Vista, an appropriate name for this town, as the Spanish translation for Monte Vista is "mountain view," which is has, in every direction.

We loaded canola seed. I think it's the first time we've hauled this. And then we had lunch in town and went to bed for some more sleep, just a couple hours. In the late afternoon we got back up to drive a few hours, crossing that distant range I'd seen earlier in the day across the valley from us, and headed at last out onto the great plains of eastern Colorado.

That was our little jaunt across the Colorado Rockies this week. I enjoyed it very much, as I'm sure you can tell. But it was also really nice to be back out on the plains. As you well know by now, I have a slight obsessive love for the grasslands. Yesterday we finished crossing eastern Colorado, cut across northwestern Kansas, and went up into Nebraska. Today we headed north out of Grand Island, NE and will cross the Dakotas, ending our day in the very northeastern corner of North Dakota where we deliver in the morning. 

Our first week out after our lengthy break is behind us now. It will be interesting to see what the next week brings us. We seem to have started a tradition of working through Thanksgiving, and since everything closes for the weekend, that usually means we get LOTS of time to kill on our weekend load. It gives us the chance to get some rest, and have some play time too. And it's fun to celebrate the holiday in differnt places. Last year we had Thanksgiving dinner at Cracker Barrel in Kingman, AZ. Wonder where we'll be this year?
 

The Great Migration

Fall is the time of year when some of the greatest migrations on the planet take place.

 

Malcolm and I have been off the road and, for the most part off line, for a little over a month now. While we were off, our time was consumed with gathering, packing, loading, and then the reverse of all those actions.

 

One chilly evening we were down by the water working on getting some things loaded before dark, when a familiar but seldom heard sound reached our ears. And sure enough, when we looked, way off on the horizon we could see a long wavering line of sand hill cranes making their way towards us. Have you ever watched them in flight? They do not fly with the organization of geese and ducks. It always looks to me as if they are constantly trying to straighten their line, and failing time and time again. This particular group made their way to the lake behind the house and were well into their circling (which takes a while) and landing routine, when we noticed another line off on the horizon. And behind them, another line, and once they were landing, another line, and it went on like this for an hour or more! By the time they were finished, there must have been hundreds of them up on the lake, and it was all I could do not to abandon Malcolm to the work and sneak up there with the camera. If not for the fact that it was too dark for decent pictures and that I didn't want to risk disturbing them, I would have done it.

 

As it was I did end up with a picture of their great migration. The next morning, Malcolm and I had to run an errand and we left pretty early, just as the cranes were gathering into their various groups and heading on east.



Birds are not the only creatures that migrated south this year.

On a frosty morning in early October, we loaded up and headed out...

...to deliver Dawn and Gemma to their new owners. We had decided to sell Gemma as I already have my hands full with Sky and Reba, and also she is such a gorgeous girl with so much to offer. I was thrilled when I was contacted by a couple that wanted to purchase both Gemma and Dawn! I am so happy that they were able to stay together and that Gemma didn't have to go off to her new life all by herself.

The new owners are really nice and I believe they love the girls as much as I do. Dawn and Gemma had started growing their thick winter coats getting ready for a Montana winter, but I told them to slow down on that and wait a bit. They are now living in Arizona, and I don't think they'll need much winter furr down there.

After that, there was just one more migration to get taken care of.  It involved a lot of early EARLY  mornings,

2 vehicles, and lots of miles. I drove the pickup and Malcolm drove the big truck. The girls generally road with me. We started out with everyone in the pickup with me.

Some "people" are good pickup travelers.

Some...not so much.

So there we were, going back and forth across the country. Montana to Tennessee...

...and back....

...and forth...

...and back...

...and forth...

..and back...

...and finally I'd had all I could take of Carlie Jean. So she got the boot and had to ride in the Peterbuilt with Malcolm.

After that, we were able to lay back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

All those crazy Carlie Jean pictures are actually from the first three hours of our first trip. Which should be enough explanation as to why I kicked her out into the Peterbuilt. I thought I was going to go crazy. Apparently our Carlie Jean, the big truckin' dog, is not so much of a little truckin' dog. It was a lot quieter once she was moved, but really not that much more pleasant.

It was tiring and long and tedious because it was the same trip, same scenery, and driving a pickup is actually a lot more tiring than driving the big truck. Can't explain why. It just is.

It took three trips.
Trip one was pickup and Peterbuilt and then the Pete stayed in TN and the pickup went back to MT.
Trip two I hauled the horses down with the pickup while Malcolm took the Kenworth down with the hopper. Our broker actually got us loaded for that one, so we got paid to move our stuff more or less.
Malcolm got there a day after me and the horses, but all ran smoothly and we didn't have any problems. The horses were relieved to get off the trailer and their eyes about popped out of their heads when they saw all that green grass. I don't think they came up for air for at least three days!

Ok, so I'm exagerating a bit. We kept them in stalls for the first night with hay, and then the next few days we kept them in a corral while they recovered from their long ride and adjusted to the new surroundings. And then we let them have the run of the pasture. They are now settled in, quite content, and making friends with all the neighbors. They are quite popular, which works great all the way around. All our neighbors enjoy visiting with them, the horses get lots of attention and treats, and we know we have a number of people keeping an eye on them while we are away from home!

Back to migrating:

Then there was trip three. We had moved the trucking business and our horses and tractor, but we still had to go back for our household things. We also needed to haul a couple more things with our pickup. But why drive two vehicles back empty. So, Malcolm, ingenios problem solver that he is....

...figured out how to save fuel costs on that return trip.

We loaded up in some cold windy weather, turned around, and got back to balmy Tennessee. We decided to take a couple weeks to unload, unpack, and do some relaxing before we hit the road again.

That couple of weeks is up now and we're loading this morning. Time to get back to work. We got nearly everything in the house unpacked and put into place in our new home. It's a good feeling. We got started on putting Malcolm's shop things away too, and will work some more on that when we come home for our next break.

We had not expected to be leaving Montana. It's amazing how much the road of life can turn so drastically in such a short amount of time. But we've landed solidly on both feet in a wonderful place, where we're surrounded by lots of family and have already had encounters where we've been able to get reaquainted with old friends and already began to form the bonds for new friendships. We love our new home, and are excited about our life here in my sweet home state of Tennessee!

A Week In Review

This time last week we were sitting in Kentucky. Since then we're traveled through a number of states, but we are still about 1000 miles behind our average for the week, having traveled only 3031 miles thus far. That puts us at about 2000 miles short for the three weeks we've been out since our break over the 4th.

From Kentucky, we loaded in southern Indiana and delivered a load of corn gluten to Kansas City. I couldn't seem to get a picture of Kansas City without a billboard in it, so I just picked the best one out of the bunch, but I'm not purposely advertising for whatever that billboard is about.

After Kansas City, we re-loaded nearby and took a load of corn to northern Arkansas, then jumped back up into Missouri to load poultry meal. That load went to Nestle Purina in Flagstaff, AZ.

Along the way in New Mexico there was another hot air balloon, a frequent sight in that state. I actually managed to get a picture this time, but there were a few power lines I couldn't avoid.  I think that would be fun to do one day, take a hot air balloon ride.

Flagstaff was nice and cool in the 70's and felt delightful after a weekend in the south's heat and humidity. After unloading there, we traveled north towards Utah, enjoying the aroma of cedar and sage brush after a rain storm along with the beauty of an Arizona desert sunset.

We stopped for the night out there in the desert and the next morning, finished our trip to Monticello, UT where we loaded wheat. Malcolm drove through Canyonlands National Park as the sun was rising. He was it was spectacular. I was asleep and missed it. I did get to enjoy some of the unique rock formations of southeast Utah, just not the more famous ones.

Our load of wheat was headed to Platteville, Co which is north of Denver. That meant a 450 mile drive across western Colorado and the Rocky Mountains on I-70. This time Malcolm missed the scenery while he slept, and I enjoyed watching storms build over the Rockies.

 

We delivered the wheat this morning and reloaded at the same place with wheat midds, which is too lengthy to explain so I'm providing a link that explains it briefly.

Just south of Fort Collins, CO I was watching the crop duster at work, which is always entertaining because they swoop so low. We heard a story of one that accidentaly flew into the side of a truck's trailer that was passing by on the road. He must not have been paying attention.

This guy stayed high enough to be safe though and made several passes over this field while I watched.

We are now in western Wyoming and its getting late. The sunset is just finishing up and it was beautiful as always. Wyoming is like Montana in that it rarely fails to provide spectacular sunrises and sunsets.

We expected in California on Monday morning, in Petaluma which is north of San Francisco in US101. Hope you all have a great weekend and I'll be back on Sunday with my Sunday Stills post! Till then....

I just re-read my post and realize that there are a number of typographical errors in it still. I thought I had caught them all. Let me just apologize. Given my overly sensitive keyboard and mouse, and Wyomings slightly bumpy interstate...well its a bad combination for both typing and reading. Now its late, their is a moth that has flown in the window and is irritatingly making use of my bright computer screen, and I am just too tired to bother with the typos.If I were self-disciplined enough I would wait till morning and fix them then post, but I'm going to go ahead and post now, b/c I know many of you do your blog reading in the mornings. I know, I know...lazy and a bad example as a former teacher, but as I've said before...I taught Science and not Language Arts for a reason!

Good Night All!