Utah

Pops and I had a very busy week this past week. We arrived in Michigan on Saturday, late in the afternoon. Pops had contacted a preacher friend of ours and inquired about attending church services with him and his wife. The next thing I know is, we are invited to spend the night with them and ride with them to church. What an invitation!

When we got into town it took us awhile to find parking that we were comfortable with, as far as leaving the truck unattended. We didn't have a load on, but we still carry a lot of our own personal belongings. We did find a place and soon Terry Strickler was there to pick us up.

We enjoyed a wonderful evening with him and his wife, Judy. She had baked a chocolate mayonaise cake and she and I went to a local parlor and got some triple peanut butter cup ice cream to go with the cake. Yummy! It was good.

The bed where we slept was in the finnished basement. We had our own bathroom too. It really was wonderful to have so much space. But I had trouble sleeping. I think it was because we are so used to hearing the rumble of our generator. It was just too quiet. But I did rest.

The next morning I came upstairs to a huge variety of breakfast foods. I zoomed in on the cinnamon rolls and coffee.

We all had devotions together and then Pops and Terry left for church. Judy and I would come later.

It was a real nice church. Sunday School was very interesting. they are discussing idols in various forms and this week we talked about people who use food as a god. Hmmmmm.

Then the church service was good as well. We heard a really good sermon on God being with us at all time and that we are living, walking worship services.

After church Judy fixed a fabulous dinner of meatloaf, scalloped potatoes, corn on the cob, pumpernickel rolls. Yum. I am getting spoiled. 

We left shortly after dinner. We needed to get up north before dark and before the storms came that had been predicted.

The next morning we went to a military base and picked up our load. There was another Fedex couple there getting a load too. We chatted with them for a little while. Our truck was loaded front to back and top to bottom. And then we were off. We were headed to New Hampshire. We had to be there by noon the next day and these same men that loaded our truck were flying there to unload us.

The trip went well. 

The next day we got unloaded twice as quickly as we got loaded the day before. We a super great group of young people. I am proud to get to know some of them.

We then got a load offer to pick up a load in upper Vermont, only 4 miles from the Canadian line. The load was going to Morgantown, WV for the next morning. 

What a fantastic drive through New Hampshire, Vermont and Up State New York. The weather was gorgeous and the drive is great throught the vast wilderness of the mountains. 

We got our load off the next morning and immediately got a load offer that picked up in Philadelphia. It was a government load which requires constant watching and one of us had to be awake and with the truck until in delivered in Salt Lake City, over 2000 miles away. We get very tired when we do these types of loads but we do like them. 

After we got the load on we started our drive. But we didn't even make it 20 miles before we got into stopped traffic on the Pennsylvania turnpike. After a little while of sitting still, they closed the turnpike down and detoured the traffic. So we then had to travel about 23 miles of narrow, amish country, back roads until we could re enter the turnpike at another location.

Shortly after that I went to bed. 

Now let me explain how we watch our load on these trips. DOD (Dept. of Defense) requires that we do an 8/2 split on our driving logs. That means that one of us will drive for 8 hours while the other sleeps then the sleeping person wakes and drives for 8 hours while the other sleeps,. Then the first diver will drive another 2 hours, then the second driver drives for another 2 hours then repeat. We do this over and over until we reach our destination. But it isn't always easy to sleep on demand and also while we enter and are on the military bases or gov't institutions we both must be awake and present even though one of us is logged in as sleeping. So after 2000 miles of this you can imagine how tired we are.

But the trip across was wonderful after we got past Illinois. Iowa is rural and it is easy to get lost in thought. I listen to audiobooks, always, when I drive. It helps to pass the time. Nebraska was so green with the corn fields and soybeans. I slept through most of Wyoming and then when I did drive, it was dark. Then we got to Utah just at daybreak. What a beautiful sunrise.

We drove right past a place called, Devil's Slide. It was a rock formation that came the whole way down the mountain.

And then a very short while later we reached our destination and got unloaded. We, then headed to Ogden, Utah to get some work done to our truck, mainly our A/C needed fixing. 

So, now we are waiting. We are relaxing and working on resetting our log hours to be ready for another week. After 70 hours each driver MUST  stay off duty for 34 hours to get a "restart." 

We have located a church only 4 miles from where we are and are looking forward to meeting another congregation tomorrow. 

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