THE DREADED NIGHT DRIVING

It's only a matter of time, after enjoying almost a week of what I consider a "normal day" in trucking driving, (getting a good night's sleep, waking up without an alarm, a leisurely morning of getting dressed and putting on at least mascara, and enjoying breakfast in the truck), we ended up on a four day run of night driving and no opportunity to take any photographs. 

It started on Friday morning, after our drop in Clackamas,OR at the Fred Meyer DC at 7am.  After being unloaded and sending in our empty call, we were told to drop our trailer there and await a load that night at 9pm.  The only great thing about it was being able to bob tail about a mile down the street to the parking lot of a McDonald's where we would spend the next 12 hours.

Not to sound like a broken record, but do you think during that 12 hours that we could actually sleep?  Nothing worse than knowing that you need sleep, but not being able to get any, but that's usually how it goes, and innocently thinking that we would only have to do it for one night, (again I should know it never is just for one night), I didn't stress too much about it and went about playing on my computer and watching the homeless guys who made their home in the bushes surrounding the parking lot.

Our load would take us to the Boise, ID area, where we would make two deliveries in Nampa and Garden City.  Those deliveries went as planned, and as we headed to a nearby truck stop we were beeped with our next assignment.  With Craig's hours already nearing using up all of his 70 hour clock, it was a load out of Wallula, WA (257 miles away) to be picked up the next morning.

However, this particular load would require us to once again, start off around 6pm, get to Wallula around 11pm, hook up to our new load, grab a couple of hours of sleep, and then take off again, repeat that a couple more times to get us as far south as we could before a repower of the load by another driver would take it into LA for delivery.  We ended up sleeping on and off, doing a 8/2 sleeper berth option to get us into French Camp by 2pm Monday afternoon.

The upside to all this night driving?  We ended up being able to meet up with my brother and sister in law, and my two nieces and grandniece last night for dinner.  Here is a photo of the aftermath of that dinner and a picture of Gwen sporting a sock monkey hat I had made for her by a facebook friend who is very talented .