Kansas City, MO

I must say it feels good to be back on the road after a week off.  You know that saying that you need to get back to work after vacation to get some rest?  That is how J and I felt when we got back in the truck and headed back out.  It was such a whirlwind time off that I don't think we slowed down at all.  It seemed that each night we were off we were only able to get about 5-6 hours of sleep with everything going on.  We went to Lubbock, up to Pagosa Springs, back to Lubbock and then to Ft Worth all within 7 days.  Whew!  It was a great trip, but it was nice to get back in the truck and get some rest!

Thursday morning after we had breakfast with the kids and that adorable grandson of ours, we stopped at Walmart to restock the truck and the headed to Irving to our yard to check in and get a load.  They didn't have anything there for us so they had us grab an empty trailer and head to El Paso to pick up a load coming to Kansas City.  We got into El Paso around 0400 and grabbed our load and I headed out around 0500.

I took the shortest route which was US 54 up through New Mexico and the Texas panhandle.  I honestly don't think I have taken that route all the way through before.  It was a really pretty drive.  There is a town called Carrizozo in New Mexico that is the cutest little town.  It is down in a valley with mountains on each side of it.  It is an old town but looks like they have really taken care of if.  Most of the houses and building on the main street were painted really nice and the lawns kept up.  It was just clean.  It was one of those little towns that I wouldn't mind living in.  Here is a little history on this town.

 http://www.townofcarrizozo.com/history.html

I made it a whopping 459 miles to Stratford, TX before I stopped for the day for J to take over.  I should have had about 600 miles but I stopped in Santa Rosa, NM at the TA for a PM on the truck.  Goodness gracious PM's (basically the equivalent of a premium oil change for a car, check fluids, filters, tires, etc) are expensive!  A whopping $371.00 and two hours later I was back on the road, so that took up some time.

After we switched over, J got us into Kansas City around 0130 and now we are still sitting here waiting on a load.  We told our dispatcher a few days ago that we want to stay running on the Western board.  Everytime we get back to Atlanta, or anywhere that the Eastern board controls, we end up sitting several days and we don't like that.  We don't get paid for sitting!  Chad told us that there is a lot of freight out of Kansas City to the West so we will see what happens here in a bit.  Hopefully we won't be sitting all day!!