Paducah, Kentucky

Sitting at the Pilot truckstop in Paduchah where we have stopped for the night, showered and fed, with good internet access.

After unloading the tyres in Cochrane Ontario on Tuesday morning we ran down to Missisauga and squeezed into a spot at the really crap Pilot truckstop late in the evening, ready to run to our pickup in Brantford Ontario the following morning.

We were at the yard ready to load in a timely fashion, but they took an absolute age to get around to us!
The load was for two separate drops in South Carolina, Spartanburg, then Greenville which we duly set off with, crossing into the USA over the beautiful Bluewater Bridge at Sarnia Ontario.

The electrics in the truck had been playing up a little the last few weeks, but I had checked everything I could, and I assumed it might just be tired batteries, but on the way south it became clear that the alternator was buggered!
A quick call to the boss, Ryan got us a stop at a Peterbilt garage in Knoxville Tennesse, where after about an hour we pulled away with a new alternator fitted and working a treat. This was much better than the Pete dealer in Lethbridge where a simple service had us sitting in the workshop for ages before anyone even put a hand to it, apart from tipping the hood, and the whole deal took two days, for a simple service and some small repairs, and they clearly didn't see a problem with the electrics!

We crossed mountains in North Carolina at night, and feel sure that we will have missed some beautiful scenery, if the views we got in the mountains further north were anything to go by.
The two drops were done quickly and we kept on running, down to the tyre yard in Lexington to load some small (smallest we've carried yet) 11'4" off road tyres for Alberta.
An early overnight stop in Madison, Georgia due to the curfew time, and after greasing the truck and trailer at 5am, we ran up to where we are now, Paducah. We would have liked to have got to Mount Vernon, but an RTA on the highway stopped us for a while, so we lost some daylight time.
Tomorrow we will get up into Iowa, then Monday should see us stopping at Watertown South Dakota , where fellow trucking blogger Chris Arbon recommended a good place to stop.
These few shorter days should see us rolling the hours around without busting them and having to reset anywhere, and letting us get up to Claresholm for a cosy couple of nights at the Lazy J Motel. on Wednesday night or Thursday morning (weather permitting).

Late post.

I wrote this post on Sunday, hoping to post it sooner, but we've been without internet, so since I wrote it we have cracked on a bit and we're now south of Detroit on the way to South Carolina with lumber from Toronto.

It's always nice to find small town USA, where the pace is laid back and the people seem more friendly, and Grand Marais ticked those boxes whilst we had a relaxing break there due to being unable to run our oversize load into Canada on a weekend.

Cath feeling the chill in front of the frozen bay.

On Friday night we had a wings and pizza supper at Sven and Oles and a couple of beers in the Pickled Herring bar.

We did try another bar, but the food was aimed at the hippy clientele, ie tofu and wild rice style concoctions, they also were charging $9 a glass for wine, which, although I don't drink wine much, gives an indication of the other prices for beer etc, and being a tight Yorkshireman, it was more than my delicate disposition could take, so we had a quick beer and moved on.
Saturday night we went back to Sven and Oles and had another good value, tasty, filling supper, and a couple more beers, but not the 'Blue Moon' beer which I tried the night before, which was served with a slice of orange, and according to Cath smelled like rotten veg.

We had wandered around the lake front on Friday, taking pictures in a bitter wind, but when we went back down on Saturday morning we were surprised to see that half the bay had frozen over during the night. It was also a nice blue sky on Saturday, so the pictures didn't look like black and white shots.

We had booked a room for two nights in one of the local hotels which was warm, clean and very comfortable, with nice staff, and our only disapointment was the 'fuel surcharge' scam, which is, what it is, a scam!

The bill for the room was as we had agreed when we checked in, but apart from the tax (which is always added) there were two other charges, one for the use of the amenities, and one for the fuel surcharge.

There was an explanation at the foot of the bill, which says it was a 'compromise' to avoid increasing their room rates, which is clearly ridiculous, so I told them I wasn't willing to pay either of the extra charges as they had never been mentioned at the time of checking in.

The extra cost was only $4.50 total for the two nights but, it wasn't the principle, it was the money!

We returned to the rest area near the border for Sunday night, and took the half mile walk up to the very impressive 'High Falls'.

High Falls waterfall near Grand Portage on the US Canadian border.

Much better in real life!

If we get this way again in summer we would definately try and make time for a stop here in this stunning area of Highway 61 Minnesota.

It's a gold mine!

After an uneventful run down to Texas with a hay load, we were routed to Topeka Kansas to pick up some 13' 4" tyres to take to a gold mine in Cochrane Ontario.

Stopped for an inter-trip near St Pauls (couldn't spell Minneapolis)

We had to run short miles until we were given an exact plan, and only got final instructions when we were near the Canadian border.

The permit restrictions in Ontario mean we can't run on a weekend, and as we couldn't even get a pilot car to run us up to Thunder Bay on Friday, we had to find somewhere to park from Friday until  Monday, so as we weren't near any facilities it meant running back down the northern shore line of Lake Superior to Grand Marais, Minnesota.


Originally we were told we would be delivering right to the mine which is 198k's from the town on a winter road, but now we shall only be going to a yard in Cochrane, which is way better for us.
The company will pay us layover pay for the weekend as we were willing and available to work, but the circumstances were beyond our control.


We left the trailer in a secure place close to the border crossing, and will pick it up on Sunday and run to the rest area at the border ready to cross first thing Monday morning.

Tommorow we will try and get some nice pictures from around town, if it's not snowing too much, but here are a few which we both took on the way here today.

Me snapping some icy rocks on the foreshore.

Pebbles frozen in spray.

Amazed at the strange sight.

Frozen waterfalls down on the right at the edge of the lake.

Life goes on...

We returned from our last trip on Monday night, unloaded the tyres near the yard, slept in the truck and went to load hay on Tuesday.

One off, four to go.

The hay load took a while as there was some confusion about how to load the bales, with our boss on the phone to the farmer, who then relayed instructions to his loader about which way to place the bales.
After 2 hours outside in the bitter -26 temperatures I was all strapped, and ran back up to Claresholm to begin tarping, but, unfortunately, when I got back and we measured the height, it was too high to be permited for some of the US states as it had been loaded wrong, so we had to return to the farmer to have it re-worked!
When we finally got back to Claresholm for the second time it was getting dark, and the weather had deteriorated, so we went up to the Lazy J Motel to take a couple of days off and re-set our hours without attempting to tarp.

We will be setting off on Friday morning, for a similar trip to this last one, and looking forward to a bit of warm weather.

It's a very sad time for us just now, as my mother passed away on Tuesday, but she hadn't suffered too much, and still had all her mental faculties, and at 91 years of age she had done pretty good.

She had wished for her body to be donated to medical science, and my brother and sister back in the UK made all the arrangements to fulfill her instructions, but that means there won't be a funeral for about 12 to 18 months until her remains are released back to the family, so life goes on as usual for us here in Canada.

A long way from home.

Died peacefully today, after a short spell in hospital.

My Mum will be sadly missed.

A much better person than I will ever be.

I hope she meets my Dad again somewhere.

Dad and Mum, always lots of affection and love around them.

Curfew woes for Mick McGarry.

We left the Pilot at Dalton this morning and picked our pilot car up at the scale before the Tennessee border, along with Paul and Mick, which would escort us all across Tennessee and Kentucky, leaving us to continue unaided as we passed over the river into Illinois. (Thanks Jimmy).

Cath, with Kay from Apache Escort Services on a previous run at the scale near Ringgold Georgia.

Unfortunately for Mick, he didn't get across the river to Illinois, and had to shutdown early as he didn't have enough driving hours left to get much further, and won't have enough left tomorrow to get him out of Illinois before the Martin Luther King holiday curfew comes into effect for oversize loads, so he is stuck in Paducha Kentucky for a few days, poor lad.
Paul pulled in at jct 52 on the i55, but we carried on to 100a to use up all the daylight time that we could, pulling into the Pilot truck stop at Springfield IL bang on half hour after sunrise. I'm sure we'll run together tomorrow sometime, as we both push for Sioux City Iowa.

There's a cafe/diner at the truck stop, called the Star 66 cafe, and whilst we got seated and served pretty quickly, there was a queue of 15 along the corridor by the time we were done (it's that popular)! The place is the busiest diner we have ever seen in the USA, and the generous portions, large choice and great prices, as well as the friendly staff mean we will call in here again.
I took some good video shots of the trucks on the road today, well I thought I had, but it was set to photo, so I'll try again tomorrow.

Mick avoiding a low bridge in Casper Wyoming on the way south earlier this week.

It looks like winter may have arrived here now, with sub zero temps and snow.

For my fellow Brits who don't have a choice as to where they work, but (quite rightly) complain about the crap in the UK, ie no parking, or expensive, unsafe, unhygienic places... sign the petition here.., it has to start somewhere.

Southern Bar B Q

On the way across to South Carolina we called in at the Cherokee Trading Post for breakfast, but spent so much time looking around the shop that we didn't have time to eat and had to crack on.

Cherokee Trading post and restaurant Oklahoma. 

Piggy back tractors in the parking lot.

Piggy back tractors in the parking lot.

We picked up the tyres on Wednesday lunchtime and only got as far as Madison near Atlanta before we had to shut down for the curfew, which is half an hour BEFORE sunset in Georgia.
Another short day on Thursday as my driving hours were short and I wouldn't have enough time to get a pilot car and make it up to Illinois before my time ran out.

We got parked up at the Pilot at Dalton, exit 326 off the 75 nice and early and Mick McGary arrived shortly afterwards, although Paul shot through to Ringgold a little further up the road, so he missed out on a great meal at Miller Brothers Rib Shack, just across from the truckstop.

Mick had a big plate of nachos, meat, cheese, sour cream, barbecue sauce and jalapenos as a starter, and it would have filled me up without a main meal!

Me and Cath had a plate of BBQ wings to start, which, like Micks starter, were delicious.

Main for Mick was a pile of buffalo wings with coleslaw, onion petals and potato wedges. Cath had a half rack of ribs, not the little baby back ones, with potato wedges, onion petals.

Cath looks drunk!

I had a pork plate, with beans, corn on the cob, an extra side of whole deep fried (perfectly cooked) catfish and all these came with Texas toast.

A nice friendly place which was very quiet as there was an impending storm and it was very cold out.
The server and cook (owner?) both asked if  we had enjoyed the food, and of course we said yes, and we'll be back again.

We will be all meeting our pilot cars up near the border in the morning, but can't go around Chatanooga until 9am, so a little lie in tomorrow, then flat out, to beat the Martin Luthor King holiday curfew in Ilinois, which means we have to cross into Iowa before Saturday noon, or else we will have to park until Tuesday morning!

I was hoping to meet up with fellow driver and blogger, Dave Caldwell, but once again we will probably cross on the highway running in opposite directions near Nashville, so catcha later Dave.

Dutch Lady Trucker

Met up with a colleague yesterday who is from Holland, and has worked here for a while since driving all over Europe for years.

Corina by Mick.

Carina is pictured here with me, Mick Mc Garry and  Paul Mannion having a quick break.

Photo by Cath.

We followed Mick, Paul and Carina for some of the way, but me and Cath were going to Texas with a hay load, and the other three were going a bit further south with large reels of tubing.

Big reels by Mick.

Running south through Wyoming.

I'm typing this at the Flying J in Amarillo, and tomorrow we will be heading out towards South Carolina where we will be loading some 13' 3" off road tyres to take back up to Canada.