leaving the plains for the mountains.

From Stratford, TX, we headed to Ulysses, Kansas, where we got to see and snuggle this sweet baby:

Ms. Jessa Marie

Thanks, Rachel, for letting us stop by and shower and meet your sweet kids, and share our crock pot chicken and rice!

We picked up a load of pipe the next morning, while I was still sleeping ;)

Off to Montana!

Nothing exciting happened on the drive, except for the awesome scenery, which I got plenty of pictures of.

We were in Kansas and the eastern edge of Colorado some, but it was flat fields, which aren't too interesting and don't photograph well from the truck, so I pretty much ignored those states. Except this one gas station right inside of Colorado we stopped at that had an authentic Mexican restaurant next door and we went over and got tamales and they were GOOD. And gone before I even thought to take a picture of them. Too yummy to stop long enough for that!

Oh yeah, on some road somewhere between the Mexican restaurant and South Dakota we got runned off the road by a wide load.

Almost went over the bank, cus as you can see, there was not a lot of shoulder to get a semi on. this dude was hanging off the other side of his truck just as much as he was on this side, and he was scraping the bank getting past us.

Not too long after that, we stopped at another gas station and I didn't get a picture of it, but there was a semi there pulling a huge trailer that was probably as long as 3 semis and their trailers combined. There was an unidentifiable metal contraption sitting up on the middle of it. Pretty sure that truck was only meant to go in a straight line, cus there's no way it goes around curves and into parking lots.

Anyways, here's the pictures, all in South Dakota.

Looks like a fire happened here:

The Black Hills!

WE SAW BUFFALO!

-obviously this was an exciting thing to me-

-we also saw antelope, but I wasn't quick enough to get a picture-

Our shadow..haha!

Black Hills sunset

We made it to Montana a few hours later, but obviously it had gotten dark and that doesn't make for good pictures. I think we parked in a random lot somewhere, but I can't be for sure, because I was asleep when we got there and I was asleep until we had already unloaded the pipe.

But then Jesse woke me up, cus the scenery was cool and he had orders to do so, but I think I'll save that for another post!

*I'm trying to keep my blog up to date, but as you can see I am a few days, ok a week, behind. I promise I will try to catch up so you can keep a little more current!

*also-I do the best I can on pictures, but just remember that I am taking pretty much all of them from the window of a moving truck, and they aren't always that great, but I certainly can't convince Jesse to turn around and let me try again, so sometimes not-so-great pictures are all I can get. 

Beeline for Texas

Ah, Texas. I loved Texas. Getting there was rough. It was flat in some places, and where it wasn't flat, it was flatter. 

Nebraska sunset:

Arrived in Texas to 73 degrees and sunshine, and green, flowy, wavy, soft, cushy grass. 

Ahh what an improvement to the 13 degrees we left behind!

Good morning from Houston, Texas!

We made our delivery to the Port of Galveston, went back to Houston for a little trailer repair, ate some lunch at Whataburger, and after we picked up the trailer, went and picked up a load of very large hay bales in a really beautiful part of Texas, and I failed to get pictures of it. I was too busy looking and trying to decide where I should build my house. It was green fields, lots of green. Fun looking trees everywhere, the kinds that grow in curves and have a little character. There were small ponds/watering holes all around, and creeks every which way. The driveways to the houses had those gates, with the cool rustic archway things, everything you'd picture a Texas ranch to be. I loved it and I was ready to buy a ranch, but my other half is a little less impulsive than me, so I am not pleased to announce that we are not ranch owners in Texas. Back to trucking, the real reason we're here...we picked up our hay to deliver to Stratford, Texas, which is in the panhandle. It was dark for part of the driving time, and another part I slept through..so these were all the pictures I got of NW Texas. 

We were delivering our hay bales to a feed yard in Stratford. Know what a feed yard is? It's where they fatten up all our yummy steaks...,I mean it's a place where they feed cows until they are fat and ready to move on to better things. :)

Smelled like home!

Acres and acres of cows, just getting fat. I felt kinda bad for them, but not bad enough to stop eating beef.

Whoa, Bessie.

I will eat you.

Them's the hay bales we unloaded.

 

That's all for Texas, it was a tearful goodbye, with alot of "I'll be back, I promises."

South Dakota

At the foragers where we picked up this load.

And then I had to help Jesse throw a tarp over all that and strap it down, in the wind, in 20 degree weather, in the dark, so I understandably did not get any more pictures! I did, however, get hives from the cold. Dangerous business, this trucking thing.

getting used to it, the second half.

These past few days in Texas have been pretty awesome! But that's not where I left off.

Jeffersonville, OH. No shopping. Pout.

But we did have an amazing pot roast that night! First crockpot meal was a success. And sadly, I have not gotten a chance to use it again, until right now. I'm cooking up some chicken and rice, and boy, does it smell good! Not that I don't enjoy my microwave meals...the Barilla pasta ones are pretty good. 

There's my pot roast, cooking away. We ate it too fast to stop and take a picture of it. This was the day of following the Lays potato chip truck, and smelling this all day didn't help! And I still haven't ate any chips. We did drive past a Lays factory one day though.

So if you didn't realize, I like food, and the lack of quality stuff is hard for me.

Moving on.

The morning after pot roast, we moved on to Columbus where, believe it or not, they were going to try to set one of these:

Not happening. Didn't happen. Couldn't have happened. So we left, headed on to Minnesota. Cold, freezing, snowy Minnesota. We stopped that night at a truck stop and the next morning, it was 13 degrees outside, and our bananas inside the truck, on the shelf were FROZEN. Yes, it was miserable. Yes, the heater HAS TO GET FIXED. It's possible my nose could have gotten frostbite and fell off, and then Jesse would have to pay for a nose job. Which could be kinda cool...but I don't want to deal with the days before that, when I don't have a nose...so maybe we'll just get it fixed. :)

After a quick drop off in Minnesota, we headed for Waterloo, South Dakota. 

Still snow. Still flat. Kinda boring.

 Apparently the mode of transportation out there in the winter time is snowmobiles, which makes sense considering the piles and piles of snow. There were snowmobile roads on each side of the highways. Thankfully the road was cleared really good, cus I don't think we could have pulled that load with a snowmobile.

Oh, I almost forgot-we drove through this "one-snowmobile" town in Minnesota.

one of my favorite families.

Just looking at these sweet faces is enough to make me miss home!

Been having a lot of fun, passing the time working on these.

So many grins!

getting used to it.

I finally got my blog up and running people! I had to switch blog hosts to get any pictures to upload, which meant I had to change the name and web address, which required a little thinking since I really liked what I had picked before. I settled on Living The Long Haul, which is a little long for my taste, but it was the only one available that I liked. Sorry it took me so long to get it all figured out! I have discovered that sitting in the back in my cozy comfy bed makes me a little carsick-feeling, and I haven't figured out a good way to juggle my laptop on my lap in my seat up front, so I have had to limit my time back here to a few minutes at a time, or while we are sitting still. When it's daylight, I really like to sit up front and watch the scenery fly by, so even if I didn't start to feel sick, I'm not sure I'd spend so much time back here.

So. Now it is Saturday, our 7th day on the road. A lot has happened in the past week!

Sunday we took off from Procon with a load of concrete forms headed to Darlington, Maryland. 

Hookin' it up.

Pulling out.

My mom and dad, Bailey and Sallie, Jesse's parents, and Joel and Marsha were there to see us off.

I didn't get a picture of everyone that was there. It was really nice to have that last few minutes to say goodbye to everyone that was there!

So we got on our way about 4:30. 

I fell asleep halfway there :) Jesse parked in a restaurant parking lot that night, and the next morning we woke up shivering. The truck has something on it called an APU that is runs a heater, AC, and power inverter while the truck is off, so when we park overnight we can turn the truck off and save a little fuel, but still stay warm/cool and have cold food in our fridge. The heater component of this was not working, so it had blown cold air all night. Brr! That will have to get fixed if we come back up north!

Since the restaurant we parked at wasn't open when we woke up (7am-things to get used to, #1),  I had to wash my face and brush my teeth in a gas station bathroom for the first time in my life. (things to get used to, #2) It got me clean, so I didn't really complain!

We had to wait for an hour or 2 before we could unload, so here we sat in the middle of the road, because there was nowhere else to go!

We finally got the forms off, and we went on our way to Baltimore. On the way, we crossed over the Port of Baltimore on this pretty awesome bridge.

You can't really tell from the picture, but it was probably 2 football fields to the water. Pretty trippy feeling being so high off the road, and so high off the water at the same time!

Couldn't talk Jesse into stopping on the bridge to let me get a good picture of this HUGE ship..so I had to settle for a blurry picture :) We picked up a partial load in Baltimore and headed out.

Monday night we found our way to a truck stop on the way to Knoxville, TN, and stopped for the night. Still no heat, so braving the cold, which as you all know...I am NOT a fan of! It actually wasn't too bad, except for anything sticking out from under the covers-like my nose.

I woke up about 3am Tuesday morning with the contents of my stomach begging to make an appearance. They showed up about every 15-20 minutes for the next few hours, wouldn't even let me take a shower in peace! First truck stop shower, sick as a dog. I guess there's no time to sit around waiting on a sick wife, so sick or not, I was through the shower and back curled up in my miserable little ball by 6:30am. I promptly fell asleep, and didn't wake up for 5 hours. When I woke up I felt fine! I definitely felt the prayers of everyone back home who had been praying for me. 

By this time, we were picking up another partial load to supplement the already partial load we had on the trailer, and were soon going to be parking for the night, as we couldn't pick up the rest until Wednesday morning. We stopped at a truck stop, and hung out, ate some macaronis, and then.. Laura called. She had just stopped by to check on my sweet kitty babies, and discovered our water heater pouring water out all over the floor. So thankful she had went by and caught it before it got too bad! We called Jesse's dad to check it out, and went to bed.

We woke up to snow, but there is no taking a snow day, so we headed on to pick up the rest of our load.

The company we were delivering the semi to had a lift in Columbus, Ohio they wanted us to bring also. Yep, they wanted it on this already full trailer! They looked at the specs, and they came up with the idea that the lift would sit right on the back tires of the semi. Well, it was worth a shot, even though it was a little out of the norm for hauling things. So we got on our way to Columbus. Snow everywhere, all the way there.

Cincinnati skyline, Kentucky side

Coming over a bridge, about 30 minutes past Cincinnati.

 Random field on the interstate.

Soon after I took the last picture, we went through a weigh station and Jesse had to pull off behind the building. Weigh stations have the right to pull off any trucker for no reason just to inspect them and make sure they are in compliance with all laws, but most weigh stations don't pull you off unless you are overweight, or they can see something wrong. So now we are both a little worried, because we are sure they are going to be giving us a ticket for something. The little officer comes trotting out of his office with his little measuring tools and his notepad and goes around the trailer measuring and scratching stuff down on his pad. Turns out, the mirrors on the semi that was on the trailer reached wider than the side of the trailer. Apparently, even though the semi we drive has mirrors that reach out farther than those, this is not allowed, and the inspector dude escorts Jesse into his office. 30 minutes later Jesse comes back with a warning, and folds the truck mirrors in and off we go.

That night we spent the night in Jeffersonville. The outlets were within walking distance and yet no shopping was allowed. We were within an hour of lots and lots of people that I wanted to visit, but that was not allowed either. I tried not to pout too long. :)

Well, we're back on the road after some mechanical issues this morning, so I'm going to head back up to my air-ride seat and see some more of Iowa! I'll finish catching you up on the rest of the week later!

Before and Afters

The hardest part of packing and the lengthiest process of getting ready to go was making the truck livable. Here's a few pics of what it was, and what it became!

What you can't really see in the before photos, is a thick layer of grime and dirt that we scrubbed and scrubbed to clean off. After much elbow grease, the truck is clean and cozy, and personalized of course.