Ganado,AZ

Last night after we switched in N. Little Rock, I stayed up front and blogged and then it was time to go back to the sleeper to and lay down with a good book until I fell asleep. It has started sprinkling a little but nothing major. As I was in the middle of a chapter all of a sudden I heard this loud BOOM and the whole truck shook! Holy Moly! I immediately yelled at J asking him what the heck that was. Apparently he had been watching a nice lightening show and one of them decided to strike in the median right next to us! Boy that was close! I have felt those before but that was by far the closest that one has ever came to hitting us. I should be thankful that I'm not Allan, another driver we know, who actually had his truck HIT by lightening when he was parked at a truck stop for the night. WHEW!!

Things calmed down and I convinced myself to put the book down and get to sleep. I hadn't slept very well the last two nights, along with something bothering my eyes. But boy I had a good nights sleep and I felt so good this morning.

J made it to the rest area on I-40 on the east side of Amarillo,TX and that is where I took off from this morning. I made a stop there in Amarillo for fuel and then one more in Tucumcari,NM for a quick bathroom break. I finally made the AZ/NM state line around 1415 hours. And it was only 508 miles. Usually when we head this direction we get really crappy fuel mileage because we are facing a headwind. For whatever reason, we had a tailwind all the way to practically the AZ state line. I was going 55 mph the whole was trying to get the best mpg that I could. When I stopped for the day I had it at 7.25 mpg. That is outstanding! Especially since I am on I-40 and headed west. I am hoping that we can end the trip in th 7's if not the high 8's. But we still have the hills in California, and they are a bear. Lots of LONG pulls that put you down in 6th or 7th gear depending on how heavy you are. Luckily we are fairly light with only about 28K in the box.

It looks like we will drop this around 0300 and then we will just wait for our next load. Hopefully it will be something headed back east that will either deliver in the Dallas area or it will be a load that we can drop at our drop lot in Justin,TX and another team can pick it up from there.

We plan on staying in Dallas until Wednesday and then heading out again. We are looking at staying out 2-3 weeks and hoping that they are good ones. Then we will probably try to get a load to Atlanta where I can drop J off to work on the boat and I will go solo for a couple weeks. After about 2 weeks, I will head back to Atlanta and take a week off to help him then we will hit the road together from there. We are hoping that during that time we will be able to get a LOT of work done to the boat and have it ready to move to Texas by the end of April or the first part of May. That is our hope. That way we will be able to stay on it and finish working on it when we go back for Jessica's graduation and then when we are there in July to pick her up to go on the cruise. I can't wait to have it done!!