Week #5 & Week #6

Back in sunny California. What a great place to visit...don't know if I could live there though. Lots of people and traffic and everybody is in a hurry. I miss the Colorado mentality. A bit more laid back that out west. The pics are from the I-5 coming north from Sacramento. Once you pass Bakersfield you are in a complete agricultural world, nothing like what you would think California would be. The cherry trees were in full bloom and up against the green velvety mountains it was beautiful. We stopped and got fresh oranges and some of the best corn nuts (freshly toasted) I have ever tasted. They weren't hard as a rock either!

The following pics are starting at Grapevine, CA. This is a pass that everybody going into LA has to pass through. It has 6% grades and lots of trucks racing their way to their destinations. In the daytime it is a beautiful drive...at night it becomes a truckers hell, with 100's of trucks racing up the hill at un-Godly amounts of speed (which the speed limit is 35 mph)...it can be pretty intimidating. But now that we have driven it at least 5 times, it doesn't seem so bad! The last photo is of Pyramid Lake which sits on top of Grapevine Pass. It is very pretty and the water is crystal clear. We have driven this pass when it was pouring, late at night and in the wee hours of the morning. This day the weather was perfect and the sky could not have been any more blue.

Starting out the week in sunny California...then it was off to Jersey. We had to be there in 3 days by 6 pm and we made it! Listening to weather reports and the closer we got to the east coast we knew that it wasn’t going to be an easy task. The storm started in Ohio and quickly began to pick up speed along I-80 in Pennsylvania. These pics are all from Pennsylvania all along I-80...these are all taken in color, even though they look like they are black & white photos. The last photo is of the New Jersey Turnpike. Once we delivered our load we had to make a quick choice on where we were going to land for the evening. If we stayed anywhere close to Totowa (where we dropped our load) we knew we were going to be stuck there for a few days. We had not had a shower in the 3 days getting to our destination to make sure we didn’t waste any time getting there. The closest truck stop was 45 miles away and the terminal in New Jersey was 53 miles. We opted for the terminal. It took us another 2 hours to go the 53 miles, but once we finally got the the terminal we realized we had made a good choice. We got stuck turning around to find a place to park the truck and that took another 2 hours and a lot of Jeff perseverance to get us unstuck. We finally parked down-hill in front of the terminal and called it a night (at 3 am) We woke up the next morning and found out that Totowa had received over 2 feet of snow, so we did make the right choice after-all!

We left Jersey and headed back down to Dalton, GA to pick up a load of carpet and then headed to Spokane, WA. Had 2 days to drive 2800 miles and we made our deadline. We drove straight through with me driving 11 hour shifts and Jeff driving 11 hour shifts, one sleeping while the other one is driving. That is the way it works when you are driving across the country. Once we got to Spokane we got a load down to Los Angeles. It was a load of batteries...pretty exciting stuff! We stopped at our first fuel stop and decided to get a good night sleep. We weighed the load the next day and found out that we were over-weight. We waited for dispatch to tell us what to do and then headed back to Vancouver terminal, where we picked up the load, and they used the fork lift to re-distribute the load so we passed the scale legally and made our weights work correctly on each axle. For only traveling 989 miles on this trip it seemed like this load was taking forever to accomplish delivery. We decided to take the scenic highway along the Columbia River in Washington along the border of Oregon (the pics). What a beautiful area of the country. Drove through wine country in Washington ...someplace I think Jeff and I could retire. We really need to reconsider our new career. Maybe we could learn how to grow grapes and live in a huge home surrounded by hillsides of grape vineyards...sounds pretty tough. But we are sticking with the trucking thing for now! The last photo is of Mount Shasta in northern California. It is 14,000 + feet and quite a pass the go over, but what a pretty drive. This is why we chose to do this job. To look at beautiful scenery and enjoy each other's company. Simple, but yet very rewarding.

These last photos are of Portland, OR...this is one place we will be coming back to explore further. The City is along the Columbia River and is very artsy and granola like at the same time. The gondola goes up the hill across the highway...not sure where it goes to, but really cool. Would love to have time to get over to the west coast of Oregon and see the beaches, but what a pretty state. Green everywhere, moss growing all over the trees. Yes it does rain a lot, but my skin totally digs the moisture as does my hair. But I do miss Colorado. We will be asking to come home in the next coming week. We will see how long it takes to get dispatched in that direction. All in all we have driven approximately 40,000 miles in the last 6 weeks and covered 36 states. We finally sat down and looked at a map of the US and these are the only states we haven't seen yet...besides Hawaii (can't drive there!) and Alaska. They are as follows: CO, ND, MN, WI, MI, ME, FL, AL, MS, LA, AR. Yes I put Colorado on there because our truck hasn't actually driven to Colorado yet! Still lovin' what we are doing, so stay tuned for more great adventures.