I got my truck out of the engine shop Tuesday morning. Finally. I then went to the yard, hooked to a double-drop (lowboy) trailer, and drove a couple of hours up to Chilton to pick up a snow broom truck heading for the airport in Seattle.
The truck needs to deliver at the airport no later than noon on Friday. No idea why, but that's what they want. I got the thing loaded and chained down and started running West.
The first part of the trip, WI, MN and Eastern SD was cold. Yesterday morning (Wednesday) I woke in Eastern SD and took off West again. It was cold. I stopped in Rapid City, SD to refuel. I put on my coat and started to climb down out of the truck. I noticed that it felt quite warm and didn't need my coat at all. It was in the low 60s. Wow.
I'd been steady turning down the heat in my truck, but I had thought it was just the sun beaming in warming things up. I had no idea it was that warm out until I had stopped to fuel. I was loving it.
No time to sit around enjoying it though so I took off again. By the time I crossed Cazy Woman Creek in WY I noticed it was feeling a bit chilly in the truck and bumped up the heat just a tad. By the time I crossed the Tongue River I had bumped the heat up some more. By the time I crossed the Little Bighorn River it was feeling a bit cold out. The sun slowly slipped behind the mountains at that point and it really cooled off.
I stopped in hardin, MT, at the edge of the Crow Nation, and called it a day. I had covered over 750 miles, that was enough for one day. I grabbed a bite to eat in the truckstop and then wandered over to the casino across the street for a couple of cold ones before hitting the sack.
It was damn cold when I got out of the truck this morning. I missed that nice 60m degree weather of scant hours before.
As I made my way across MT it was cold but the weather was otherwise ok. Until I hit the higher elevations. It was snowing up in the mountains and I started to worry about the high passes possibly being closed. Turned out they were fine and I was able to breeze right through.
I had to stop in Missoula, MT as another driver had told me the right turn signal was out on my trailer. Ah well, I needed fuel anyway so I stopped and fueled up. After signing for my fuel ticket I bought a new light for the trailer and went out to install it.
The new light didn't work any better than the old one. Great, wiring problems. I turned on all the lights and checked it out. No tail lights at all, no brake lights, the only light that worked on the back of the trailer was the left turn signal. Wonderful. Well, there's no shop around there, and I have a schedule to keep, so I took off again.
I made it through all the high passes and dropped down into Spokane, WA. I am now sitting at the Spokane Petro waiting for the shop to get me in to repair the wiring on the trailer. I am waiting because their electrical guy (they only have one of course) is currently fixing the lights (wiring problem) on another trailer. I'm hoping he'll finish soon as I really need to get some sleep and an early start tomorrow if I am going to cover the 300 miles and make Seattle before noon. And I still have one more high mountain pass to cross, Snoqualmie.
Such is trucking.