PA Fun

A crazy day in PA! We started the day south of Pittsburg and headed to our destination of Bethlehem, PA which is almost to the New Jersey state line. The roads in PA are crazy! Never in my life had I seen stop signs for on ramps to interstates. There were places where there were no merge on ramps, you had to yield or stop before getting onto the interstate. Also with all of the hills and mountains a lot of the interstate is 55mph. We got really slowed down as there was a oversized load ahead that had a police escort and took up the whole interstate. Luckily they found a place to pull over for awhile and we were able to pass them and go on.

We got close to Hershey, PA and was hoping they would be passing out free chocolate on the interstate, and about as soon as I said that we saw a man walking down the interstate and told Josh to stop he must be the one handing out chocolate! LOL! Even if this man did have chocolate I wouldn't want it from him, he was a bit rough looking.

On one section of road where they were doing construction (which is everywhere no matter where you go there is some kind of construction going on in every state) we were quite high in the mountains and they had the white line for the edge of the lane was under the guard rail and past the guard rail was a huge drop off. I told Josh I didn't like this part at all! Made me very nervous and was glad when we got through that.

There are plenty of mountains and beautiful landscapes here too but what I love the most is seeing all of the farms that are scattered around. A lot of the homes had stone bases and a lot of barns were made completely of stone and they were the big beautiful house and it seemed like all of them were two stories tall. I can't imagine being a farmer in this kind of area with all the hills, we don't know how lucky we are in Illinois to have a flat area to farm on. I told Josh the only kind of farm I would have out here is a goat farm, at least they are great climbers.

We make it to our stop and was told that we were too early, it was 1 p.m. here and they wouldn't take us til 7p.m. We have to leave the yard and find a place to park and sit til it is time to come back. The closest place we could find was in New Jersey. We were hoping it would be an approved gas station (we have a list of gas stations that the company approves of and only there can we get gas) but there are no stations in New Jersey or New York on the list so I guess we weren't supposed to be there. By the way we were only about a 100 miles away from New York City. We had time to go there but I don't think the company would have approved of all the extra miles. Josh has me look up Walmart nearest us and we are hoping to park there and be close to where we need to drop off our load. I look up on the Walmart website and find out there is one only 3 miles away and we snake our way through town in search of it. It is no where to be found when we get to the address, it is all residential. I know we were getting a few looks from people wondering what we were doing in that part of town. We then decide to get out of town and the crazy roads and get on a main road and head to the truck stop in New Jersey. We park at the TA (Travel Centers of America gas station) and go inside to eat lunch and the food was actually decent even though it was a buffet. After eating we lay down in the bunk and take a nap. When we get up it is raining and the truck stop is filling up with truckers fast and they are parking in place that they aren't supposed to, meaning we are stuck because there is a truck in our way and have no way of getting out without him moving. Josh tries to get out and ends up hitting a mirror on the truck next to us and we realize no matter what we try we are stuck. I told Josh give me the name of the trucking company that is blocking us and I call the TA truck stop and have them page the owner of the truck to move. He finally comes and out and he is happy we are leaving as he wants our space but so do 4 other trucks that were watching what was going on. I don't know who ended up with our parking space but we finally get out of there.

We had a bit of trouble coming back to the town and ended up going through the tight parts of town again to get where we needed to go but we get there and once we get to this warehouse there is a line of trucks waiting to get in. I guess it didn't matter that we were a little late as we still would have waited. We are currently sitting at the dock waiting to get unloaded and it is 9p.m. and Josh is completely out of hours and the warehouse does not allow overnight parking so now we get to drive illegally to try and find a place to park for the night. Our next load is in Carlisle, PA and we are dropping off in Ohio. We are getting closer to home but not close enough for me. It just seems like everything that you do in a truck is 10x harder than it should be, and it wears on a person after a bit. I know Josh is very tired and losing patience and can't wait to get home. I am handlling the situations ok but I am wondering if this isn't such a good idea for him. Time will tell but I am hoping some of the frustrations will lessen.

Morning update: We had time to go in to take a shower and it was a diabolical shower. I had the temp set where it was nice and warm and then it would make this pulsing sound and it would shoot out HOT HOT HOT water. Josh was laughing at me because I was in there dodging the water every time I heard the noise. Sometimes it would do it without warning, so I do believe that I am boiled clean today! You just never know what you are going to get into in these places.

Beautiful farm houses are dotted along the hill sides.

 Drop off of Death... didn't like it!

 Went through 3 tunnels

 

Finally some flat land!  Love how these little towns pop up in between the mountains.

　

DOT Inspection and more

Things just seem to go from bad to worse. We start out the morning with getting loaded at the shipper and got that done pretty easily. We go to weigh the load and adjust it and we are on our way back to Illinois. We have to pull into a weigh station and we are sure the weight is fine but we get a red light and that means we have to pull over. Josh takes the paperwork inside and our weight is fine but they wanted to do an inspection. Great. They pull two more trucks into the area for inspection also. Josh had never had done this before so we got to enjoy our first inspection together. The guy came out and went through everything, being very detailed. While doing our inspection a hazard waste truck was being inspected and he was out of there in about 10 minutes, by the time our inspection was over it was about 45 minutes. Josh comes back to the truck with the final report and they found three violations. Two of them were basically the same about the load not being properly secured and the other was there was a scuff mark on the break lines. Once agaiin we are on our way.

We make it to our destination and it is a fun time trying to back into dock. I swear some of these places like to see how talented you are in manuvering you way around. This is the first time Josh had me get out and help him back into the dock without hitting anything, it was tight. We have had trouble with the truck not wanting to start on occasion and this time it was even worse. They needed us to move forward about 3 inches and it took forever for the truck to start.. The trailer is unloaded and we try to start the truck and there is nothing. After multiple tries without even getting a sound that it was going to try to start we call McLeod, which is only a few miles away, to come and get us started since we are still sitting in the dock and I am sure they needed us to move soon. We wait for the rescue truck and what seemed like a long time they come and figure out that we have a short to the starter. Thankfully they don't leave us but stay in front of us on the way back to the McLeod yard because not too far away the road we needed had a train on the tracks and if the truck idles longer than 5 minutes it automatically turns off. Quickly the repair man runs back and tells us to follow him to a different way around so the truck won't turn off. We make it there and immediately he starts working on the starter. We also let him know that our bunker a/c isn't working still and told him about the break line that we got violations for from the inspection. I was impressed that even though it was time for this guy to go home he stayed and fixed everything except the break line as he says it is only a scuff mark on the line and there is nothing wrong. I hope he is right about that as I don't want to go through another inspection and see that we didn't get that fixed.

Earlier in the day we received our next load information and we didn't think we would be taking that load since we used up the drive clock with getting repairs done, plus we were supposed to have home time on Thursday and the run was going to Pennsylvania. We wouldn't know til morning when the dispatchers come into the office.

Early in the morning we went inside and took showers. I was looking forward to it but there was no water pressure, the water wasn't hot, and the water must of been very soft as it felt like I couldn't get rinsed, but I am always happy to be clean. Josh went and talked with the dispatcher and told him to go ahead and take that load and said we might get some home time this weekend. I am so loving that word "might", it instills such confidence. The town we are going to is called Bethlahem, so all morning I have had the song Oh little town of Bethlahem stuck in my head.

I can tell that riding in the truck is getting to me in ways I didn't expect. I am still constipated and lately my hands and feet are swelling. I am sure the swelling has to do with the combination of sitting, eating salty food, and the vibration of the truck. I don't know why vibrations make me swell but it always does. I can weedeat the yard and my hands are always numb and swollen by the time I am done. I guess I am just too delicate! ha ha!

I almost forgot, after parking for the night we were feeling a bit down and agrivated about things that had happened during the day and then suddenly a dove landed on the mirror in the front of the truck. I told Josh it was there to give us good luck but for me it was much more. It made me reflect that no matter how frustrating our day was we were safe, alive and together. God is watching over us and I am so thankful for his protection, and I believe he sent that dove to say "hey, quit your complaining and start thanking" so Thank You God!

 not my pic

An accident we saw this morning,it didn't look too serious.

Kentucky here we come!

Haven't posted anything for the past few days as there was nothing to post about since we were stuck in Virginia.  I guess it would have been exciting to tell you we sat in the truck, did the laundry, and ate some more crappy food but I'll save you that! :) 

We were excited that today was Monday and hoping to get on the road this morning, so we went and showered and called in to see what they had going for us today.  We call the first time and it goes straight to voice mail and we left a message.  We keep watching the QUALCOMM for a message to where we were going, and nothing.  We call in again and he said they still had nothing for us.  To say the least we were fuming!  I mean steaming mad and could hardly contain it any longer.  I think that sitting here since Thursday has pushed us to our limits of patience.  They finally said we may have something for you but it is 300 miles away from where we are now.  Who cares!  Give us the load!!!  About half an hour later we get the message to head to Kentucky.  Gladly.  It was a great release to be out and doing something instead of sitting.  We arrive at our destination for a load pickup and they shut down half an hour earlier and we have to come back in the morning for pick up so we are off to find another truck stop to sit the night.  It is a let down but at least we know we have something to do in the morning. 

On a positive note, Josh really cares for my bum.  He has provided the ultimate pampering for it as he bought me a camper toilet that really flushes, no longer will I have to sit on a 5 gallon bucket with a trash bag in it to potty!  Then today he buys me a cushion for my seat so it will be a more comfortable ride.  If that isn't true love I don't know what is.  He always makes sure to take care of me even when he doesn't want to, like going with me to do laundry yesterday, he really didn't want to come with but he did for me.  Isn't he sweet?!   I did try to get him to do a photo shoot with me yesterday as I was desperate for something to do but he did refuse that.  Bummer.  With all the brownie points he has earned lately I guess I will let that one slide, for now.

There is a fine line between having fun and being stupid sometimes.  Today we saw a man riding in the back of a pickup truck on the interstate.  He was moving all over that thing, bobbing his head and waving his arms.  I am thinking that he was so annoying that the other people made him ride back there.  As we drove by I took his pic which he noticed what I was doing and posed for me.  Yep he is one of them good ole boys.

Making the best of Virginia

The last post indicated that we were in Virginia waiting for our next load assignment and two days later we are still waiting. Yep still in Virginia. We were told to call in at 9a.m. yesterday to see what they have for us and they still had nothing. We called in again around noon and still nothing. We decided we are not going to sit in the truck all day and stare at the back of a truck stop. Thank goodness for the internet. We were scouting out where there were going to be fireworks and we found out that the town we are in Lexington was having a display and plus they put on a HotAir Balloon festival!!! As most of you know Josh and I have tried on two different occassions to ride a hotair balloon but both times were cancelled due to weather. I was so excited to see this plus it was to have other fun things to do there.

We call a taxi and find out it is going to cost us $15 for a ride to the festival grounds. Josh says lets go for it, you only live once. Taxi comes directly to our truck and off we go. We ask him tons of questions, things to do in town, how good is the fireworks display, and points of interest. We told him we were not the type of people that like to go shopping and so he was having trouble coming up with much but we got a few tips. We arrive at the festival grounds which is on the VMI (Virginia Military Institute) grounds and immediately we were quite impressed with the buildings and how extremely well kept the grounds were. We look at the different vendors that are set up there and the food booths. They also have bouncy houses set up. We keep walking down the road and realize that is all they have. We had missed the balloon rides for that morning but they were going to set up again in the evening. So back to the internet we go and called a few places trying to see if they were within walking distance. I stop a guy and ask how far was it to the horse drawn carriage rides and he said about a mile, and proceeded to give us directions and even offered us a ride as he was headiing that direction anyway. We declined the ride but decided to go ahead and walk there as there wasn't much else to do.

We walk toward town and we are in the historic part of town and there are lots of old buildings and we get into town and and the streets are lined with quaint businesses lined up next to each other. We walk to where the guy gave us directions to and it isn't there. We look it up and he gave us the wrong directions. By the way we are trying to use Josh's phone sparingly as he didn't charge it up before we left and I left my phone in the truck thinking it would be one less thing to carry and we still need enough battery to call the taxi back when we are done. So we back track about 4 blocks and we find the horse drawn carriage tours and sign up for it. Luckily we had a short wait of 15 minutes and off we go. We were pulled by two horses named Jake and Jenny and I was allowed to pet them but they didn't seem like they wanted me to touch them. Josh took my pic with them and even though I hate the pic of me I will still post it. (I hate seeing how ugly I am in pics, I prefer my fantasy world where I look much better). I felt sorry for Jenny as she was the one that pulled most of the weight as Jake stayed behind letting her do the work. Our tour guide told us about the history of the town and pointed out some of the places to visit when the tour was done. I didn't get too many pics of the places we saw as we were crammed into the carriage with other people and the shots would of been mostly filled with the other people.

We make it back to where we started the tour and we head to the Visitor Center hoping they had a bathroom. It didn't have a whole lot of items to look at but we did use the bathrooms and headed on down the street. We then stop in at the Stonewall Jackson house where they give tours and I love looking at older homes and their history but this one was lack luster and was only allowed to see four of the rooms and they were very sparce in items. The tour guide was very "different" and made what was a boring tour even worse. After leaving there we decide to head back toward the VMI as it was getting closer to time for the hotair balloon rides and I wanted to see them set up. As we are walking we are looking for any place where we might be able to find a phone charger as Josh's phone is in the red. No luck on that and so we decided to call the taxi now and see if we can make an appointment time for him to pick us up. We decided on 10:30 as the fireworks start at 9:30 and figured that would give us plenty of time and yes they would pick us up then.

We arrive at VMI and by now I am searching for a place to sit down in the shade. I have realized that all this sitting in the truck is making my legs weak already. Plus it doesn't help that there is no flat ground in this town it is all hills and I know that my legs were screaming at times when we were going up hill. I also only brought my sandals with me and would have been a little better off if I had worn more appropriate shoes. I also realize by this point that I am sunburned. We find some steps to sit on and have a pretty good view of where the balloons will be set up and we are shaded. I have to admit that the weather was wonderful this whole time, it got a little warm but nothing unbearable and by evening there was a cool breeze that was wonderful.

They start setting up the balloons and got some great pictures of that but by the time they got it totally blown up the wind was strong enough that they were having trouble controling it and kept pushing in the sides, so no longer did they have it up they took it back down again. The wind never did stop and so there weren't going to be any balloon rides. I told Josh that we must of jinxed them as every time we try to ride one the weather doesn't cooperate.

Now we are getting hungry. Earlier in the day I decided to I wanted a gyro as I LOVE them and one of the vendors had them. It was nasty. I was nothing like what I was wanting or used to but I ate it anyway. So now for supper I told him I wanted the chicken on a stick that one of the chinese vendors had.. surely they couldn't mess that up. It wasn't bad but it wasn't great either but at least edible. Josh also got me a funnel cake too and we shared that. After eating and all the walking I was so ready for a nap as there wasn't anything else to do but wait for the fireworks. Once they started we walked closer to them and sat in the grass (luckily no chigger bites today). I tried taking some pics but most of them didn't turn out too well. The fireworks reminded us a lot of the ones back at home, very sparse in the beginning then with a big finale. It took of all of 15 minutes. We still had to wait for 45 minutes for the taxi. He arrived a little earlier and we headed back to the truck. We were tired and went directly to bed.

We get up this morning and call in and got voice mail and they haven't called us with anything yet so we may be stuck here until Monday. I see a lot of napping and movie watching in the future as I am still tired, just walking up to the truck stop to use the bathroom is tiring. All I can say is that we better get a lot of detention pay for all this sitting. 

This is only one of the many buildings they have at the VMI

Just want to add on how awesome my husband is for doing all of this.  He had no interest in any of these things and he did it all because he knew I would enjoy it.  He has earned some mega brownie points with this gal! 
　

Welcome to....

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some pics of the welcome signs from different states.  Enjoy!

 

Here is a cute video that I found on youtube I thought was appropriate for my Welcome to page.

Way to go little guy!

Virginia is the place to be

It took to long for the mechanic to look at our truck so someone else was to take our load to Granite City. We now have a load that is to deliver to Virginia. By the way the truck still isn't fixed, one problem we had they just marked it up to a glitch and the air conditioning unit they fiddled with it and said it should work but of course it doesn't we had another night of waking up sweating and had to reset it to make it turn on again. I guess that is better than not having it at all.

We made it to Virginia and so now I can mark off two states that I have been in that I hadn't been in before, Virginia and West Virginia. I started taking pictures of the different state welcome signs as we enter each state and I know I have missed a few from earlier travels but I am sure I will get a chance to get those later.

To get to Virigina we got to cross the Applachian Mountains this time. At first I wasn't impressed but the further we got into them I was just as impressed as I was with the Smokey Mountains. I am snapping pictures right and left of the mountains and thinking "these are cool" but then "BAM" I see a stream with beautifully clear water running over rocks, trickling and making small whirlpools and I start to cry again. I guess I have it down now that it is the combination of the mountains and the streams that get to me. Josh and I discussed about moving to a place like this and I wonder if they would become common and wouldn't be as exciting if we see them daily, maybe, maybe not, but I told him we could definetly go camping there. He looks at these streams and wants to go fly fishing but I just want to walk around barefoot and enjoy the beauty of it all.

We have unloaded our trailer at our destination but now we are waiting for our next load assignment and we have been sitting in their parking lot for about 4 hours now and still not sure where we are going next. I am kind of anxious to know as I want to see fireworks somewhere new this year and hoping they are going to be good ones. I have never missed seeing fireworks each years for as long as I can remember and I don't want to start now. I am hoping to get some great shots of the fireworks as I haven't used the night shots part of my camera yet.

As we are sitting in the parking lot we heard some birds singing in between the rain that has come and gone and it reminded me of those plastic whistles that looked like birds and you put water in them and blow and it kind of sounded like a warbler. I know my grandma had those and as a kid I thought they were just wonderful. I haven't seen those around in a long time, you would think Dollar Stores would carry them as they are just cheap plastic but oh so much fun. I guess kids now days have all these electronic devices to make the bird chirpping noises for them. I think simpler is better.

I want to give a shout out to one of my faithful readers Michelle, her birthday is today but I won't tell how young she is as she has so much more energy than I do even though we are the same age. Kudos to all you do Michelle! Keep up the good work you do and hope you have a great birthday!

This pic is from Ohio, I just thought it was cool how they incorporated the city name into the over pass.

Sorry about all of the bug smears but here in the mountains they are plentiful.  I don't know how well you can see but along this highway for many many miles there were little american flags very neatly down the road.  I am assuming for the 4th of July but there was so many of them I am sure they wiped the stores out of them.

One view of the Appalachian Mountains.  Trust me I have tons more! but I will spare you more pics of mountains.
 

Tired and a bit frustrated

I am sorry for not reporting our happenings yesterday as Josh and I were very tired, and getting grumpy and we were so ready for bed that we weren't even thinking straight. So now our story begins.

As you know we had to leave out at midnight to be able to get to Chicago on time. I know Josh didn't sleep very well in the time we had but he got up on time and headed that way. I was up for awhile but have to admit that I went back to sleep shortly and got a few more hours of sleep in. We make it there in plenty of time, even a half an hour early to our relief. We get there and it was a difficult place to decide where we are supposed to be entering but Josh goes inside and says we are signed in and the first of the list to unload. That would be all fine and dandy but they put us on the wrong list and we notice all these other drivers going in the other entrance. Josh goes in and asks what is going on and lo and behold we are the wrong list and now we are third in line, but that isn't the worst news. The plant had a power outage from the storm the night before and they are running behind getting their own trucks loaded so that they could start unloading the incoming trucks. Josh quickly was using this time to talk with other truck drivers. He almost seemed relieved to have someone else to talk to besides me. Big men talking about their big trucks, it was cute. After sitting there for quite a bit and seeing all these other trucks trying to find a place to park as the their little lot was filling up quite quickly Josh and I did manage something like a nap. It is like having a baby and waiting for any little noise indicating that is our turn to unload. We waited for 6 hours. Josh decided that since we were so close to being off duty for 8 hours and that would reset his clock we waited another two hours. It didn't reset and Josh was frantic as now we only had an hour of drive time and we already had our next load assignment we needed to get to. He called up the company and found out that we had put him off duty and it should have been sleeper berth to be able to reset the clock so they were able to do that for us and we were on the road again.

The grimlins were at work again on the truck. The indicator light for the hazard lights was flashing like crazy and no matter what we did it wouldn't turn off but also the hazard lights themselves wouldn't work and wouldn't come on. We started up the truck and then the check engine light was on, perfect. The bunk air conditioning just works when it wants to and last night it wasn't wanting to, perfect. I know these are little things but it does seem to upset you when are needing a good night sleep.

After our clock reset we were off to Hammond, Indiana to pick up some steel coils. Once again our GPS went crazy. We at least got to the town and we had directions from the company on how to navigate through town and thankful for that. It was an extremely small compact area we had to snake our way around in and got to the dock and loaded right away. We leave there and I know Josh is tired and not thinking straight and we miss our ramp for the interstate. I have to navigate our way through many little towns to be able to get back on the interstate. It wasn't difficult to do except for the fact that there are stop lights at almost every block, and lot of the stop lights were not working due to the storm that passed through. We also saw a lot of tree damage along the way so they must have got hit hard. Josh was having trouble understanding which road I was wanting to take, as he is the human map, if he has been there before he remembers it quite well, but this was new territory he was trying to picture this all in his head as we are going down the road.

We did have a pretty good scare as we were driving through these towns. As you know there are these places that sell fireworks that just seem to pop up all over the place this time of year and these towns were no exception. As we were passing one we heard a very loud bang and we both jumped. My first thought is we blew a tire, Josh thought something had hit the trailer, thankfully it was neither as we realized they must of set off one of the fireworks as were going by. I can do without that kind of excitement.

We get to the nearest truck stop that has scales to weigh the load as we know we are close on max weight and Josh had adjusted the tandems before we left out and wouldn't you know it he was spot on again! It was the perfect weigh, it is just one of his many talents. We pass two weigh stations on the interstate and wouldn't you know that both of them were closed but Josh always wants to scale the load than risking a ticket at the weigh stations and I don't blame him. We made it to Decatur, IL last night and got to park in the McLeod terminal as we are having the truck looked at this morning to see if we can work out some of the grimlins out of the truck. We were both getting kind of snappy with each other and suddenly that truck seems even smaller when you aren't happy. I knew this day would come but I am learning not to say everything that I am thinking especially if it doesn't help or if it is about something that can't be changed. Josh decided that we needed to get out and have a real meal and we decided on Texas Roadhouse and was wondering if they allow trucks to park there (without the trailer of course). We then found out that McLeod has a company car on site and we could use that to go out to eat! How great was that! We more than ate our fill and came back to the yard around 9 p.m., got in the truck and went directly into the sleeper. It would of been better sleep if the a/c would have worked but hopefully we are going to get that fixed today and not have to worry about that for awhile.

This morning I decided to wash my hair in the wash basin that I brought and that was fun! (total sarcasm there) The water of course was cold and I manage to get water everywhere on the floor but I told Josh it is duel purpose, I get my hair clean and the floor mopped at the same time! Win Win! The smallest things that you want to do in a truck is such a struggle and I think it is wearing on me already. I am looking forward to time at home. I also had a headache last night and you have to realize that no matter what you are doing there is a constant stream of noise ALL THE TIME. I am currently in the drivers lounge while the truck is getting looked at and even though it isn't completely quiet I am enjoying the quiet office noises.

We have to be in Granite City by noon so here is hoping they have the truck done in time to make our stop. I took no pictures this time as things were hectic, maybe today I will get some to post.