Santa Maria,CA

Yesterday morning I got up in Barstow,CA and proceeded to make my way over to Santa Maria. Routing had me going down through Los Angeles to pick up the 101 but I had another plan. Why should I deal with the morning rush hour traffic when I could take the CA state roads that were designated truck routes. AND it would be about 14 miles shorter. So instead of heading south on I-15 I take off west across CA58 to Bakersfield. From there I hit CA99 south about 10 miles where I pick up CA166 that takes me right into Santa Maria. I knew it would be a small two lane road, and sure enough it was, with quite a bit of truck traffic. But boy it sure is a windy road with LOTS of mountains. Hit 6th gear again with a ton of cars and trucks behind me. Once again it was a road that I had not traveled before so I was taking my time. Going the speed limit where I could and even slower coming down some of the mountains. It was a pretty drive though but it did take me about 6 hours to do the 252 miles to destination.

Once I got into Santa Maria, I had to rely on the GPS directions because Prime did not have any directions to this location. GPS wouldn't even take the address of 1895 Ray Rd but it would take 1799 Ray Rd. Logic tells me that my location will be a block further on Ray Rd so I just followed what it told me. I find Ray Rd and turn on it to make my way down to the receiver. GPS told me I was there in the middle of a field. Ok, well, not exactly in the middle of a field. See the road kind of Y's off and if you go to the right, you stay on a well paved road and the name of the road changes. If you stay straight, you stay on Ray Rd but it is a road between two agricultural fields where workers are out picking the product. And it is a very rutted road that was probably paved 50 years ago. BUT, the road sign did say it was Ray Rd. I decide to keep going hoping that I was going the right direction because at the end of the field I could see a large building and I was hoping that it was the place I needed to be. Thank goodness it was. I get there and find someone and they tell me where to park. They had ordered 100 55 gal barrels of adhesive. However they didn't have a building to store them in, they had semi trailers with doors on the side. So the first half got unloaded by hand, after I backed up to the trailer, and just rolled off my trailer. Then we had to move the truck to another flatbed trailer that we unloaded the rest off onto. It only took an hour from the time we got there and they did it my hand. No jacks or anything. It makes me wonder why they can do it by hand so fast and yet we can go to other receivers and they have forklifts and it takes them 2-3 hours. Hmmm

Anyway, we get done there and I get one of them to sign my paperwork and ask if there is a truck stop anywhere close. Luckily there is and he gives me directions and we are off. I only had about 15 more minutes to work before I was out of hours. I go right to the truck stop and since we got there around 1100 local time, we pulled right into a spot. Our FM had sent us a message telling us that freight was slow so we got out of the truck and headed to the restaurant that was right next door after sending our FM a message to call us if we got a load since we would be out of the truck. Over on Primedrivers.net someone told us about a place that has great food, BBQ Tri-Tip and they actually BBQ it out front. Wouldn't you know, this restaurant we stopped at, Pappy's was the place? I had the Tri-Tip Steak Sandwich and J had the Huevos Rancheros. Both were really good! Headed back to the truck and still no word. That sounded like it was telling us it was nap time.

Around 1630 we wake up and J sends a message asking if there is anything on a load. A few minutes later we get a load picking up in Salinas today but with no busines code or address. Our FM isn't sure where we are picking up but it will be this morning some time around Salinas. Knowing CA and knowing there aren't many truck stops we decide to spend the night in Santa Maria and head to Salinas this morning. After that decision is made, we head back to Pappy's for dinner. I had the taco plate which was absolutely delicious and J had the Tri-Tip Steak plate. OMG they were awesome. Got a full belly, headed to the truck, hung out for a while and then it was off to bed. I did some figuring and since I used all my hours yesterday, I can't drive at all today. Luckily there is time on the load for me to be able to get a restart on my hours. That meant that J had to get up this morning and get us up to Salinas. They said we will load around 1100 local time, so we figured if we head on up there, we can get a spot and grab a shower at that Pilot before we load. However we are still waiting on a message with the name and address of where we are loading at. All we know is somewhere in Salinas.