Heading Home for Christmas

We have a load that takes us within about 125 miles of home. It’s a load that I found, and they booked it for us, so it’s all good. We did have to go over 300 miles to pick it up, but that was after we had gotten a load booked that picked up on Friday afternoon, but after we confirmed that we were going to get it, I talked to the lady at the shipper and she said she wouldn’t load us because they had gotten backed up and she couldn’t justify keeping her guys any longer on overtime. That’s ok, the one we’re on works better. If we had taken the other one, we would have ended up in Oklahoma City yesterday and then would have had to finagle a load that worked us toward home.

We were in Salt Lake City, UT for the weekend and spent it in the Sapp Brother’s Truck stop. I spent Saturday afternoon getting my hair colored and it is now RED. It’s not a great picture, DH was getting creative, but it shows the red. The problem with living in a truck, is that sometimes you have to use the services in the truck stop and while I really appreciate them, sometimes you have to go with something that wasn’t what you had envisioned. My hair hasn’t been colored since May, when we were getting ready for my stepson’s wedding. Then, we were on the west coast and I got my hair streaked, which I love. It had grown out quite a lot, and I had very dark roots and the rest of it was very light brown and blond. I wanted to go all one color and ended up with Auburn (a mixture of light and dark) because that is what the hairdresser had. It’s very different when I look in the mirror now, and I think DH likes it, but he wont commit. The best I get out of him is that “it doesn’t look bad”. So is that good or just not bad?

We were in Salt Lake for the weekend and the most we did was install a new radio in our truck. It was very cold and we hooked up to Idleaire so that we didn’t have to idle and we had movies and heat, although the rear of our truck was still cold and we had to be under blankets to watch television. We rented the new 3:10 to Yuma with Russell Crowe. It was an interesting movie, rather dark, but well acted. I chose that one, instead of Elizabeth or Becoming Jane because I thought we would probably watch another one and because DH has been wanting to see it. We didn’t rent any more, but I did get to watch a bunch of HGTV, which I like while DH installed the radio in the truck. DS wasn’t happy about the HGTV, but he had been watching Encore Westerns and he got to choose that, so it was my turn.

I finally got some pictures to share with you. We had to go west of Salt Lake and pick up our load yesterday. The scenery out there was gorgeous and snow covered, but definitely camera worthy. You be the judge:

We went down a valley that led to Dugway Proving Ground. That place is in the middle of no where. You drive about 40 miles west of Salt lake and then turn south on UT 196. The road leads to the military installation and that’s all. We picked up a hummer and trailer that are going to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

This is what our truck looks like with this load on, after we had the truck washed.  Do you know what the road salt does to our truck?  It makes it look horrible, although the damage that was done to the front end doesn’t help it look much better and you can see in that picture the bend in the bumper from where that guy hit us when we were in Seattle a couple weeks ago.

This is the road that led out of Dugway.  It was 30 some miles from I-80 down to the main gate of the installation.  As we were coming back out, I took these pictures and it really was this straight and it did lead back to civilization.

Can you imagine living in a building this small?  Ruins like these are scattered all over the west.  These were the kinds of buildings that people that were coming out west to homestead were putting up because they had to have something that they could live in to “prove up” on their claim, but usually built something a little bigger and more livable when they had gotten their claim “proven”.

When we got back out on I-80, one of the first things we saw was this:

There are piles and piles of salt in at least two different companies and I am assuming that it, or most of it, comes from evaporation from the Great Salt Lake, but I could be wrong.  On the left you can see the Morton salt girl and now you know where at least some of the salt used in the US comes from.

It’s a leeetle Icy

We’re on our way to make a delivery, although we really aren’t moving right now. We’re sitting in a little bitty truck stop about 80 miles from our delivery. We are in Iowa, and the freezing rain has begun. I will have to get up with DH when he gets up before the crack of dawn because he’s going to need some company if the roads are bad. Hopefully we won’t get the forcasted 1/4 inch of ice, up to 1/2 inch of sleet and the 2 to 5 inches of snow on top of the sleet and ice. Hopefully we are far enough north that it will be the snow of 5-8 inches instead. Somehow….I DON’T THINK SO! It’s already raining and the truck next to us has a coating of ice on his hood. Sound like fun? SO NOT FUN!!!  This is one of the few things that I don’t like about this job.  The bad weather is not my favorite.

I’ve been working on some stealth knitting using Cider Moon Glacier in the Bison color way. It’s a gift for my oldest son and it’s really not all that secret, cuz I don’t think he even knows I have a blog, but we’ll keep it quiet just the same. I’m also still working on the socks for my mom. Loving the yarn (Cider Moon Glacier in the June Carter color way) and the pattern of the socks, hating the heel. I’ll get through it, I just don’t like the slip stitch heels and the pattern of Wendy’s, from Wendy Knits that I’m using, calls for it. I’m using the Loopy Laces pattern that Wendy designed and the pattern is loverly.

I am also still working on the scarf for DH using Knit Picks Gloss.  It’s in a chocolate brown and tan, and I really need to get it done, although it’s some smaller than it should be, cuz, ummmm, I didn’t consider yarn and used what I wanted to and not what it called for and I didn’t swatch and well, it’s purty!

I guess if I am going to be called upon to get up at 0’dark thirty, I better go to bed.  Mayhap I shall have some pictures for you tomorrow.  I will try to get some of the knitting, or the ice or something.

This doesn’t bode well….a salt truck/snow plow just left to hit the roads.  At least they are out and taking care of it as it happens.

We’re in Chicago

and baby it’s cold!!! At least it wasn’t snowing today and we actually got our load off and to the next one where we got to load indoors.

On Monday we were in Seattle during all of the storms that you’ve been hearing about. It was soggy and miserable for unloading. My poor hubby stood outside in the pouring rain untarping and unloading for almost 6 hours. I do believe there was a bit of incompetence on the part of the consignee, but that’s the life we live.

On Sunday night, we got to the delivery and parked in the parking lot that they have just for that purpose. We wanted to be there bright and early because we had already been pre-planned on a load out of Seattle and we wanted to get unloaded early so that we could pick up early and “get out of Dodge”. Well we parked in the parking lot behind another truck. My DH is very conscious about distance, and he was 35 to 50 feet behind this other truck. We went about doing the things that we need to do to get ready for bed and DH was in the back of the truck and I was sitting in the front on the computer when he started yelling at me to “LOOK! LOOK! LOOK!” I looked out the window and couldn’t see anything (it was dark out) and then looked again and this truck was backing up at us at a relatively high rate of speed. I immediately grabbed the air horn cord and blew it long and loud, but the driver of the other truck backed right into us. DH was NOT happy! Not only that, the trailer did $1800 worth of damage to the front of our truck. Wanna see the gory details? What you see below is the damage that was done to the grill and the light. He also did some damage to our bumper (which is almost half of the cost of repairs).

See how the license plate holder is all bent out and not lying flat? There is corresponding damage to the bumper. And then, as we were coming across Montana the other day, DH hit a great big tumble weed in the road and knocked one of the round lights out of the bumper, so our poor truck just looks pitiful. For a 2001 truck, she used to look pretty good, and she will again, when we have the repairs done after getting the money from the insurance company.

We have been through Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois since the last time I posted. I took some wonderful pictures of Monument Valley, the snow on Monarch pass as we were headed home, some beautiful sunset cloud pictures in Utah, and some stunningly gorgeous pictures of the mountains in Montana (oh and the black at the bottom of this picture is my husband’s grody cowboy hat that sits on his dash).