Menomonie,WI

Another day down! Still not feeling really well, but I am feeling a little better, so that counts for something.

Last night we delivered our top secret load to the airport and then headed to the Flying J just south of Milwaukee,WI to spend the night. We got our next load right after we dropped at the airport and we saw that we were able to sleep in a little this morning, so that was great news.

Knowing that I could get some extra sleep, I set my alarm last night to wake up this morning at 0700. We went ahead last night and idled the truck since it was quite cold outside. We have the auxilary heater in the truck, but it is extremely hard to regulate that thing. It goes straight to about 95 degrees in nothing flat and then it is just miserably hot. Since we both haven't been feeling better, we decided to idle so that we could control the temperature in the truck a little better and get a good nights sleep.

With that in mind, I headed to bed at around 2130 last night and woke up feeling a little more refreshed. My nose was a little more stuffy this morning, but I felt better than I did the day before. I ran inside to do my business and grab something to drink then came back out and took Smokey for his morning walk. Since we were parked at the Flying J, and they aren't a fuel stop for us, I had to drive across the street to the Pilot to get fuel. By 0810 I was driving out and hitting the highway.

The load we picked up today in Menomonie,WI had an appointment time of 1430 and it was 267 miles away. I ended up and arrived there at about 130o and they were able to get me right in to a dock and they started loading me. It was a tiny place in that there wasn't a lot of room in front of the docks to maneuver around. They had a big grassy area about 15 feet wide that went to the road with no curb around it. It sure would make it easier for us trucks if they took out that grass and paved that area. It took me several tries to get the truck straight with the dock because I didn't have much room up front. I was thinking that maybe it was just me having a hard time until the next truck came in and had the same problem. It wouldn't have surprised me if it had just been me since you never seem to be able to do anything 100% when you aren't feeling well. So either it was just a hard back, or the other driver wasn't feeling well either. haha

Anyway, we got that loaded, went and scaled and grabbed some lunch. We were a little heavy on the trailer tandems so we had to slide the tandems one notch to get legal. We didn't have much leeway since we are going to Victorville,CA with this load and we can't have the trailer any further back than the 6th hole to begin with. But we got it all set and took off.

As soon as we hit the road I pulled up the National Weather Service website to check the weather. We were routed to drop down to I-80, then take I-76 into Denver, then I-70 over to UT and from there hit I-15 down to Victorville. When I checked the Colorado website there was snow up on I-70 and it was not looking good. The road around Eisnehower Tunnel was snowpacked. Not good. So I look at an alternate route, taking I-80 all the way over to Salt Lake City,UT and then hitting I-15 to go south. It was only about 70 miles further but there was snow, icy roads and high winds across Wyoming. Ok, that doesn't look good either.

Well, I decide to check my last alternative which was to hit I-35 in Minneapolis,MN and take it all the way down to I-40 in Oklahoma City,OK and then hit I-40 across to I-15. This route is about 120 miles further. However, there are less mountains, which means much better fuel mileage, and no bad weather. We still may spend a little more on fuel going the extra miles versus what we would spend pulling the mountains in Colorado or Wyoming, but we decided we would rather do that than to have to fight the snow.

Now that we have a plan, we are pointing the truck in that direction and off we go. We are currently trying to see if we can drop this load around 1500 on Wednesday there at the receiver in Victorville,CA or if we are going to have to stay with it and wait until the appointment on Friday morning. Our hope is that we can drop it on Wednesday and that we will be able to get something out of CA that evening so that we won't be stuck somewhere over Thanksgiving. We really want to keep moving until Christmas or New Years. So we will see what happens. We may get there and deliver and not be able to get anything until Friday so we may be stuck anyway. But I guess it is better to get there and be ready for another load just in case we luck into something.