This last trip out I went to some neat places. Mid-July, I finally got my truck back from the shop after getting the 5th wheel, one of the rear ends, one set of brakes and the kingpins replaced. Unfortunately, it cost a substantial amount of money but then I drove to some fun places. I started out in Lovell, Wyoming, headed for Lodi, CA. The first night, I made it to Little America. The second night, I made it to Winnemucca and stayed at a truck stop I’ve never stayed at before. It was nice and quiet except, where I parked. Ironically, I parked far away from everybody else, and some idiot parked right next to me with his reefer running. So, after I got out of my shower, I moved my truck to a different spot far away from this idiot and everyone else again. So that I could shut my truck off and enjoy the cool evening without someone’s engine running in my ear.
I started up over the mountains westbound and stopped at the Gold Run rest area. Originally, I had considered staying the night there, but it was 104 degrees and there was no air movement. I decided I might as well go down and stay at a little truck stop near Lodi, that I’d seen before when driving through that area. I shot a picture of one of the locals at Gold Run.
I stayed there for the entire weekend and got a 34 reset. To survive the heat but save on fuel, I would not run the truck any longer than I had to. I would sit with the windows open trying to withstand the heat for as long as I could. Then run the truck only when it got to the 95 or 100 . I hurried to my delivery on Monday morning, delivered and it wasn’t very long before my dispatcher had another load for me from US pipe at Union City. I drove over there and got loaded and headed to Salt Lake. I was hoping to get all the way to Fernley, NV so that I could get a shower because I hadn’t had one in a few days. I only got as far as the Donner Summit rest area. Despite the lack of shower, it was a beautiful area the scenery was fantastic. They have a little walking path that I walked around, and I took some pictures. It was just beautiful and the temperature was in the 50s, it was really nice overnight.
I drove all the way across Nevada and Utah to Tooele. Unfortunately, when I got there I discovered that Utah is really not making anyone go back to work. Essentially, there were no showers available because no one was working to clean them. I delivered my load to Salt Lake City and I got another load from Salt Lake City to Spokane. I managed to have enough time to get to the Bonner truck stop, which is my favorite truck stop in Montana. I got a shower and a nice meal and enjoyed a cool evening. Because I was so late getting to Bonner, I had to wait until a little later in the day to get started, which put me in Spokane at 12:30 pm to the place that I delivered. The guy in charge of unloading was kind of jerk, but you get that every so often. He got mad at me because I swept all the wood splitters from his pallets off onto the ground.
Next, I got a load from the Dalles in Oregon. I went south across Washington to Oregon. Then, down the Columbia River Gorge to Biggs Junction where I stayed the night. The truck stop is up on the hill and you look down over the river. It’s a cool view. I took a couple of pictures of the flood basalts. The next morning, I went down and picked up my load at the railroad tie plant. The people were really friendly. I headed back towards Idaho to deliver my load. I saw osprey in the Columbia River Gorge, which was great because I’ve never seen an osprey before. As I was driving across Idaho on I-84, I saw the craziest thing happen. A vehicle coming westbound, as I was headed eastbound, crossed into the median several times. It was headed right towards me and then came to a crashing halt. The two young men that were in the SUV seemed to be okay. They got out of the vehicle and were standing there looking stunned. Obviously, it was not their time to have anything happen because at that very moment, an ambulance was passing me. The paramedics immediately stopped and jumped out went to tend to them. Unfortunately, my dash cam didn’t catch a real good clear shot of it.
I stayed in McCammon, ID, which is a tiny little town that has nothing in it, except a Subway and a truck stop with no food. The next morning, I got up and went over the hill to Soda Springs. it was a really pretty drive. I had snapped a couple pictures at the truck stop the night before. After getting unloaded in Idaho, I went home and had an early supper with M. Then, headed to Gillette.
I camped out at Gillette at the shipper’s and got loaded in the morning. I headed for Iron, Minnesota. I was driving up US85 in South Dakota, near Ludlow, SD, the low coolant alarm went off. I pulled into the restaurant in Ludlow and started looking for leaks. The transmission cooler line was leaking. After I took up the floor, I touched it and it fell off in my hand. It had heated up enough that it had softened and the hose clamp had cut through the hose. I managed to wang it back together and continue my trip with a little help from the nice gentleman who owned the restaurant at Ludlow. As I was going through Valley City, ND, the alarm went off again. There must have been a bubble in my system. I stopped at the Love’s and filled up the tank some more. I stayed the night there. The next day, while I was driving, the alarm went off again. I put some more coolant in it and continued on my way. I managed to get all the way to Iron MN. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find a load for me, so I ended up deadheading down to the truck stop across from the shop. I stayed the night there. The truck was still losing coolant so the next morning, I started looking for a coolant leak. I discovered that the hose was actually cut under the hose clamp. I cut it off and repaired it again. This time, I correctly refilled the coolant tank and did a little bit more maintenance. Finally, after calling the shop a dozen times, they got me a load out of Iowa.
I met an interesting guy at the rest area I was staying the night at. He was from Russia and he’d been traveling around the US as a backpacker, mostly hitching. I asked him what he did to earn enough money to come to the United States and he said he worked as a delivery driver in Moscow, where he lived. His name was Andre. He was a really interesting person who was looking for a ride to Des Moines. I told him I wasn’t going that way and I couldn’t I wasn’t allowed to take passengers. He eventually found a someone driving a car who would take him. The next morning, I drove over to Boone, Iowa and picked up a load of steel for Denver. I managed to make it to Brush, CO where I stayed for the night. I got up and got started as early as I could in the morning, I hurried into Denver to deliver my load to a new high-rise apartment that was being built. The people were cool and let me take pictures of them unloading my truck. The neat thing was they craned the load off my truck with a sky crane and even took some pictures from the eye in the sky on the crane and gave them to me. The dispatchers couldn’t find anything to get me close to Casper, so I went home empty for home for days off.
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