Another working visit to Denver

While Kurt is driving alone back to Massachusetts, Joanie got 4 days to play with our favorite grandson.....




But there was also work involved- helping Amy and Tim take possession of their new home at 8am Saturday morning. Here they are walking up to the house for the first time-as owners.

Mark is pretty skeptical about this new place.... He stays pretty close to mom for the first hour
Early afternoon the kids went to retrieve the TR3 from the apartment and bring it to its new home.

And here is the work part......By 5 pm we (Joanie, Lisa, Amy and Tim) had repainted two of the upstairs bedrooms. The master bedroom is now a sage green...

And one of the other bedrooms went from a pre-teen's pink to this burnt orange.....

Joanie is in Virginia for 6 days and will fly back to Denver on Friday. Kurt will hopefully reload with yougurt on Wednesday and swing through Denver on Saturday to pick up Joanie and continue on to LA

Wall Drug visit and beautiful Montana

We are westbound and following I-90 all the way from Wisconsin to Washington. The route took us through Wall, South Dakota. Wall has a "world famous" emporuim called Wall Drug. We were able to park in the RV lot and visit the store. Here is Kurt admiring some of the displays....

and admiring another display.......


We don't have a picture of the next morning when it was minus 15 with the windchill in Wall.

But the day dawned bright and sunny. Here are a few pictures of big sky country in Montana




We delivered in Spokane on Friday and had the weekend off to visit friends and make a mail run to Kettle Falls. Monday we will be in Tacoma- hopefully awaiting another load to take us back east.

A shiny truck again

We had a chance to stop at a truck wash in Sioux City, South Dakota. Here are some before and after shots ....

Notice the steam coming off the wet truck. That's what happens when you drive a warm, wet truck outside into 15 degree weather!

Saddly, we encountered more slush after these pictures were taken so the shiny luster has already dulled.

Driving in the frozen midwest

Tuesday was a snow day for us. We were in a light snow storm for 500 of the 600 miles we covered. That meant driving through Cleveland and Chicago with slush and ice on the road. Here is Chicago. It was nerve wracking in the city traffic because you were always on guard for some car to go skidding in front of you. Luckily that never happened to us but we did see several fender benders and a jacknifed big rig.

From Madison Wisconsin on into Minnesota on Wednesday the scene is just white and bleak. Here is a blurry shot of crossing the Mississippi River at LaCross, WI- frozen solid.

Salty truck!

Here is what our poor truck looks like after a day of driving on salted highways

We did unload our apples on Monday morning and will reload near Buffalo on Monday evening. Our new load is destined for Spokane and Tacoma- we'll be there by the weekend (at least to Spokane)

A storm catches us!

Well, here we are parked in Ashtabula Ohio on Saturday night. No snow on the ground and fair skies.

And here is the view to the west from our cab-looks pretty nice...

And here is the view from our cab when we woke up on Sunday morning......

Big red is all snowed in......

However, the weather satallite showed better weather to the east- so we are off and driving

The wind came up and we were sometimes in white out conditions and the truck was rocking!

But we sure were happy to see a "salt shaker" ahead of us.....

After a couple of hours of white knuckle driving we arrived at Corfu NY. And a patch of blue sky followed us into the parking lot. Apparently the worst of the snow is over- and now the temperature is going to plummet- to about 8 degrees with 20 to 30 mph winds. Yes, we will stay bundled

Between storms

We have been SO lucky on this trip east- There is a bad storm ahead of us and another one following us- but we have had easy going since we got over the Rockies. The roads are dry and we are mostly keeping summertime speeds. Here is a typical scene...

Of course, the storm behind us may catch up to us along Lake Erie in Ohio where we intend to spend the night on Saturday. It is about 45 degrees here for a high on Saturday-- and the prediction for Sunday is between 18 and 22 degrees with snow and strong winds. Oh Boy!

Frigid Montana

There is not much snow on the ground in eastern Montana- but it sure is cold- near zero with the wind chill. We just crossed the Yellowstone river and -as you can see-it is frozen solid!

Here is this morning's sunrise too

We've upgraded to on-the-go internet service!

See Joanie.....See Joanie connect to the internet out in the middle of Montana!

We now have internet service in the truck as we drive along- anywhere we have cell phone service we also have internet. Pretty cool!
And in case you are wondering about the google ad at the top of the blog page--- it is a "service" that Google provides. The content of the ad is supposed to match to content of the blog. AND I get 5 cents every time someone clicks on the ad. SO keep on clicking my friends!

More mountains to cross- Wed. 2/6

We crossed the mountains in Idaho and Montana today-barefootin' [trucker talk for no chains needed]. There is a lot of snow in them thar hills too. Here is the historic town Wallace, Idaho- under several feet of snow



Here is the road going up to Lookout Pass which is on the border of Idaho and Montana. Notice the sign on the side of the road- it is nearly buried.


Just for a little contrast here is a picture of the same road sign taken last fall..




And I couldn't resist these pretty snowy creek scenes

MORE winter time driving fun-

The fun just never ends! On Tuesday 2/5 we drove over Snoqualmie Pass in Washington state and had to "hang iron" [trucker talk for putting on chains]. Here is Kurt just doing the last adjustments on one of the chains-- and no, it really isn't fun at all. But we did make it over the pass- and luckily for us we were the 3rd to last truck to be let through before they closed the road for 2 hours to do avalanche control.


Snoqualmie has received 130 inches of snow in the last week. The snow banks are nearly as high as our 13 foot high truck







It was very slippery going over the summit of the pass. We passed this flatbed truck that lost its traction. And this is something you don't often see- this road grader plow is actually PUSHING the truck over the summit



But here is the silver lining to our day. When we got over the pass and into eastern Washington the sun was shining. Isn't it beautiful?


We were in eastern WA to pick up a truck load of apples to take back to NY state. The place we went to load was on a bench above the valley- here is the stunning view as we clinbed the hill.


And another view looking across an orchard towards the foothills of the Cascade mountains.

Life is good

Thanks for everyone who has written or called to see if we are OK-since we hadn't updated in awhile and the pacific coast news is all about all the stranded trucks from road closures.

Well, we are fine. Kurt has just completed another round trip to Los Angeles. He did run into snow - requiring putting on chains - in Oregon and again in northern California. But the next day he was wearing shorts in 70 degree weather in LA!

Meanwhile, Joanie was on the windy and stormy Oregon coast doing a Head Start job for 6 days

Here's a few shots from the last week and a half

On Jan. 23rd we drove south through Oregon under beautiful blue skies. The grass was green and these goats were happily munching in their pasture. [It was the next day that we almost got stuck in snow on the Grapevine]


On Jan 27th we encountered a blizzard as we headed north in the middle of Oregon. This was, fortunetly in the flatland in the valley. We had gotten through the southern mountains before this storm hit. But as you can see, the visibility and road surface were not good.

And here is a pasture full of sheep the same day. They don't look as contented as they had been just a few days before. Look at the snow piling up on their backs!


And, another contrast, here is a view of downtown LA on Jan 31st. This shot is about 6 blocks from the downtown core- and yes, it was taken from the cab of the truck. Kurt made a delivery on 3rd street - just ahead and on the left. It sure was a pretty day in LA

Another pretty picture from Southern California. It is not very often that the San Gabriel mountains have this much snow. This picture is from Ontario looking NE.