Catching up on posts

So it's been a few days since the last posting...And I'll do a mass photo dump when the interwebs is a little stronger...

Figured I'd stop being lazy, fire up my 4 active brain cells and share the ridiculousness that has been the last week and a half...And why Daryl has been in the dog house for the last couple of days...

We last left off in Provo UT after a nice couple days down to reset Daryl's hours and enjoy Father's Day. After unloading the silica sand to a high school in Heber City UT for their new football field installation we headed over to Salt Lake City and sat at the Sapp Bros truck stop through the holiday (Monday the 19th). While there we got to enjoy some tasty meals at the Apple Barrel Café, the waitress there was amazing and an absolute hoot to shoot the breeze with. The showers on the other hand were less than desirable. even for truck stop standards. The sink leaked to the point that the entire floor was under water...All a girl wanted to do was shower after nearly 3 days of pushing hard, and blow dry her hair without electrocuting herself! Oh I was mad...Not at the fact that the sink was leaking, it happens...But at the fact they had the audacity to charge us $15 to shower! You can bet your ass I marched my plump behind (water dripping from my hair) and got a damn refund lol I hate to admit I had to be that "I need to speak to the manager" person, but good lord! I wonder how many drivers had their showers ruined with similar instances and just went along with it because the mentality for them has been to accept the bare minimum...Nope...Nuh uh. These places need to do better, especially if they are going to charge an arm and a leg to park, shower, do laundry, print off a paper, etc. One over night stay can run near $100 in some places depending on the services utilized. The manager was kind enough to hear my gripe, sympathize and give us the refund, Daryl was shocked lol He figured it would just be a "sorry about that, no refund"....But enough about that.

Tuesday the 20th I was able to book us a load coming out of Salt Lake City of fiber cable reels picking up about 10 miles from where we were parked, headed to West Sacramento. We stopped along the way for my mandatory 2 hour potty break (aka awesome road trip sightseeing opportunity) and it just so happened to be at the Bonneville Salt-Flats in UT where we snapped some pretty sweet pics, watched a lady dance around in her underwear in a homemade photoshoot...Ask Daryl how salty the sand is....Not his finest moment, I'll admit even that one had me scratching my head....He's worse than a child sometimes I swear LOL

Wednesday is when the real fun began... I was able to book a sweet paying load of fertilizer ingredients from the Port of Stockton headed to Center, CO (no one pays to run out of CA, but I found the one load on the board apparently covered the rate coming out and going into a dead zone lol). Halfway to our stopping point in Bakersfield Daryl decided to kick things up a bit by messing around and getting a speeding ticket while traveling through Visalia. For those who don't travel out west much, the speed limit for commercial vehicles and all vehicles towing is 55mph in CA (absolute crap if you ask me), he was clocked at 69mph...Never mind the 4wheelers traveling at the speed of sound all around us, let's pull over the big guys and waste their hours driving through the crap state....But I digress... Needless to say we had an impromptu safety ops meeting while pulled over on the side of the road waiting for CHP to bring us his ticket..."We" won't be speeding any more in CA lol or the doghouse will call his name!

From there we stopped in Bakersfield for the night and continued on through the land of beauty and zero cell phone reception aka the Navajo Reservation where we stopped at the Burger King in Kayenta AZ which was literally the only place with over night parking within a 75 mile radius. Of course there wasn't afterhours restrooms available, so that was nice lol Fun fact, the average female bladder holds approx. 16oz of fluid at max capacity, pregnant Nicole's apparently holds 32oz, ask me how I know LOL

Friday the 23rd was an absolute scenic adventure full of pit stops for me to snag pictures of pretty waterfalls at 12000ft, it was also a day that completely scared the crap out of me going through Wolf Creek Pass in CO, not once but twice on our way to pick up our current load. If you've never experienced climbing a mountainside going 12000ft up and back down a steep 8000ft in the mountains in a 80000lb tractor/trailer with hairpin switchbacks at 5-10 mph, lemme tell ya, it's a terrifying trip (especially for someone deathly afraid of heights like I am). I can't imagine traveling that pass during winter in the snow! Not to mention, if not strategically maneuvered, at any time our brakes could burn up or lose air pressure, causing us to loose function or blow our cylinders due to over revving and not maintaining speed while in low gear. Not to get dramatic, but the chances of those things happening are high and equal a not so fun trip over the side of the mountain in certain areas. Let's just say it was enough to freak me the hell out! All the while traveling through CO I'm trying to do my office duties, book us a load, sign contracts and communicate with a brand new broker with 1 bar of signal...But we got it done folks and are working on our 100th load!!!

We decided since load #100 wasn't picking up until Monday (today) in Farmington NM, we'd spend some time down in a cheap truck friendly hotel, catching up on all the business stuff and things (and chunky dunking in the pool, because yeah...pregnant in summer, in the desert...yeah). I'll wrap it up here, because my laptop battery is low and this is already half a novel...I'll finish up today's adventure in another post...All I can say is "gotta love Mondays!!!"