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...My Life as 'Drive away' driver
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.. the trip continues from HERE 230305 IA-FL 2 RV's to Seffner FL (delivered) ... spending the night at Sarasota FL There is no hot water at the sink. As in when we try to run just hot water, nothing comes out. I let the front desk know when I checked out and they <> said impossible. I had even tried turning the water on and off under the sink. No luck. It looked like the front desk person was fixing to head to our room as I was leaving the hotel. All I got from breakfast was one yogurt. 2nd day in a row I had leftovers for breakfast. The hotel did have Twins Baseball schedules for the pre-season. Winter Park is near Orlando so it would be close. But it is hot and the tickets aren't free. Anymore, maybe they never were as I have never tried to purchase them before. 1st stop is just about across the street at a Raceway gas station for some pop/soda as it is called here. Then, we are sailing along on I-75 and the sign says 'toll booth ahead.' ??? GPS hadn't said anything, no other signs had said anything ... but as soon as we could we pulled over to get our I-Pass out. As soon as BB is out of the car, a road side assistant pulls up. She gets the I-Pass out of the trunk and we are on our way, without talking to the assistant. Turns out we could have paid cash, but we hadn't waited long enough to see that. BB had put the GPS to avoid all tolls, but it has a habit of changing things in route. 2nd stop is road side boardwalk called Kirby Storter. We may have been here before but I'm not sure. We stopped at three places last time we were down here, this may have been one of them. We did see where an alligator had walked between watering holes in the mud, but no gators today. Just a couple of snakes on the water, some turtles and some fish. It is <> 90 degrees and humid so we aren't here for long. BB is ready to head back but someone we talked to a few times said that a few miles down the road there were gators. We passed the place last time but didn't stop. This time we drove out of our way to. Just because I wanted to do something today. 3rd stop was the Oasis Ranger Station. They have a board walk along the highway ditch. I counted 25 gator's in the two block stretch. I don't think there is any way they could survive in the food in that area so someone must be feeding them to keep that many there. BB just walked far enough to use the restroom. We had thought the visitors center may have AC, but it was closed. Short stop. Forecast says that next week ... eight days from now, the high temps should be in the 70's instead of closer to 90's. We'd have had a lot more fun with our four days off. It is now nearing 2 PM and we haven't eaten yet so we head to one of the first places we get to when we reach civilization. Mel's Diner. Last time we ate at a place across the street from Mel's but BB looked at the reviews and since new owners have taken over the place has taken a turn. 4th stop is Mel's Diner in Naples. Looks the same as others we have been to, but there website only lists five south FL locations. The 'Original Mel's' is the one we eat at in NV with more locations. I ordered something and was told that is only available M-S, not Sunday. I had wanted something small, instead I ended up with a dinner item and I was stuffed. Meatloaf. And cream of chick soup. Both good, but too much. Too hot to plan anything else and it will now be 6 PM by the time we get back to Brandon so we just head. After looking at ?? reviews, BB decides we will stay in Sarasota instead because nothing near Tampa has great reveiws. 5th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Sarasota. We are now less than an hour from our rental exchange. No more meals tonight. We do get a drink and another item from their 'store' as gifts because we are getting rewards points for our stay. I thought most places did this, but this is our first time out of our four free nights here in FL. The load board has been down since after noon Saturday so not much planning happening. IF there is something before we get our car, we will change our car reservation. IF there is something in Creedmore, we have until Ocala before it adds trip miles. IF there is something in Shelby, we have until ATL before it adds many trip miles. From the rental car place, it is three days if we head straight home. But we are far enough from home that doing a 2nd leg does pay. 230306 IA-FL 2 RV's to Seffner FL (delivered) ... spending the night at College Park GA Breakfast - some eggs and gravy (the sausage looked too greesy) Load board was still down at 8 AM at the start of their work day. It was working before 9 AM, no comments as to the why. We left about 10 AM. The people ahead of me checking out, English was not their first language. When they tried to check out, the desk clerk tried to tell them that they had reservations (paid?) for the rest of the week. Desk clerk even printed out the reservation ... turned out the people had told the clerk, or she heard wrong, the wrong room number. All was OK. 1st stop was for fuel a few blocks from the rental car place at a Speedway in Brandon. 2nd stop was the rental car place in the mall. This time we knew where it was and we both went in the correct door. When BB asks if we can just keep this car, they say 'sure, we don't have any other cars to give you.' ??? All of their parked spots are full of cars. But this works better for us. In and out in 15 minutes or so. 3rd stop was in Bushnell for food at the Arby's in Loves. They are out of the onions for their monthly special :( I got it anyways. This place puts on lots of Garlic spread, Most of it on the wrapper. 4th stop was the Lake City Rest area - I call dispatch on a trip from AL to MN, they tell me it is gone but it stays on the load board for most of the day. We are kind of not sure what we want to do. There is a storm coming in at home and we should be able to beat the worst of it if we get home Wednesday night. But that means passing on all work. If we had called on the AL to MN trip right away, we may have gotten it. But that would have likely forced us to shut down somewhere and come home after the storm. Not sure what the extra day of sitting would have cost us, and if the trip then would even be worth it. Never did find out what it was. 5th stop was the rest area in Ashburn GA it had been two hours. 6th stop ... it was another hour from the rest area to here so we had to stop the prior time. But we could have stopped in Ashburn and gotten fuel, and paid more. Here we stop at Buc-ee's. Gas is $2.99 (as it is at the next Loves if we had looked) As long as we were stopped we also got food, shelf food. A chicken salad sandwich for me and a chicken burrito for BB. When we got to ATL, it was fun. I had told BB where we used to stay, the location, not the address or name. And she found something close but I never looked to see where we were going, I am trying to listen to the GPS and follow my nose to where we used to go. I miss two turns in a row. We end up at the airport. From here we follow the GPS. When we get to the hotel, nothing looks right. We are on the wrong side of the freeway. Which is what I thought when BB was talking. 7th and final stop is the Quality Inn in College Park. After we check in, I look at the map. I can't find our old hotel. I even find a write-up from when we used to stay there. But I can't find the hotel on the map. It has been eight years since that write-up and things may have changed ??? There is one open spot in the trees that we think may have been the hotel. I used to fuel CNG buses a mile or so from there and remember the street names. But the only hotels there now are $200-300-$400 a night hotels and we didn't pay that. Load board US - 197 IA - 64/62 MN - 11 WI - 11 Tomorrow we have about 11 hours of daylight, we may make it to Hannibal MO. And then home on Wednesday. Unless interesting work shows up. 230307 IA-FL 2 RV's to Seffner FL (delivered) ... spending the night at Hannibal MO Plan was to leave out at 7 AM local and grab breakfast to go. But we didn't find any. They did have waffles, and apples, and juice. Not sure if this is normal? They also only had half the lights turned on so it was mostly dark in there. But ... it may be one of the better hotels for the money in the area. The people coming and going in the courtesy shuttle van looked to be all flight crew. Another issue I didn't mention last night, they hadn't written down the password for us and when I called, they had such an accent that I didn't know what they said. So I hot-spotted my phone for the night. We did leave out about 7 AM. AM rush hour traffic was not any worse than the traffic we had on the way down. 1st stop was in Jasper at a Loves for breakfast food. I had a shelf shelf croissant, BB had a shelf 'taco.' 2nd stop was in Nashville at a Loves for fuel. There was a little slow down because of an accident on the combined section of the freeway. Other than that it was a mostly at the speed limit day. 3rd stop was at the Charley's in Paducah. Signs said their road was closed and then listed a few business names. Further details showed that the road was open to their location but beyond there and people had to come in from a different direction. And we might start doing this more often. We ordered online ahead of time so this stop took less time than picking out shelf food. Down side of Charley's is it is not real easy to eat in something moving. But we did it. Food was good, but still never as good as the location in the ATL airport after not eating and being rushed for 10 hours before the sandwich :) Bridget inspection at the state line for the oncoming traffic, cars and trucks are backed up for miles. And we see the road crew working on making 'cross over lanes' so more road construction is on it's way. Local dispatch calls today so I don't have to call them. Now they know that we will be available for the rest of the month. But not for today, that is why they called. 4th stop was at a rest area near Mascoutah. I had purchased washer fluid in Paducah and now I added it here. It didn't need any yet, but we've moved enough of these southern cars this winter to know that the washer fluid / water will freeze up when it gets anywhere close to freezing. And we have a storm coming in. The storm was supposed to hit the Twin Cites but now the path seems to be further south. Either way be plan on being home before the storm. Up to this point our ETA has not changed all day. All our stops have been under 10 minutes and traffic has been good. Coming into St Louis on I-70 from the east ... lots of vacant buildings, broken out/rotted out windows and doors. Not sure how the area is but I don't want to find out first hand. 10+ years ago, I had come into St Louis on a bus and needed to take a taxi to my shipper. Someone at the bus terminal told me that I was to wait inside the station until the taxi was there, then the taxi driver would come in and get me. It was not safe to stand outside, even in the daytime. 5th stop was in New London at the Loves for fuel. From here we realize we have lost time coming through St Louis and we won't get past Hannibal before dark. So Hannibal for the night. 6th and final stop is the Quality Inn in Hannibal. Food is from Fiddlestix next door. BB and I split their Philly dip. She gets a side salad and I get soup. Still too much food. Load board US - 221 IA - 45/53 MN - 11 (4 that I would do) WI - 11 Tomorrow we have about another eight hours drive time. Plus we need to line up some appointments for home and ourselves. We likely won't work again until Monday and then not be further from home than 500 miles the rest of the month. 230308 IA-FL 2 RV's to Seffner FL (delivered) ... spending the night at home First, a few more things from yesterday. I finally got paid for my Rockford trip where the RV broke down, almost six weeks later. Not the longest we have waited. We passed a few, or passed the same tractor a few times. It/they were a black Deutz. Research now shows they have been making that tractor for a couple of years. First time I have seen one. Also looked up Deutz dealers, there are a few, just not on roads we travel. Now for today ... We noticed at breakfast that they were not using real plates today. The hotel did not have the good eggs today. But the other eggs were good, that plus sausage and juice. We are ready to go, I had to look for the front desk help, they were in the kitchen helping out. By now, the bus load of kids in the breakfast area, for some reason they had all of their stuff stacked along the wall ... not sure why they didn't just leave it in their room. That may have been why they didn't dare use real plates today :) We pulled out about 7:30. It had been raining but wasn't as we were heading out. 1st stop was at the Pilot in Mount Pleasant for the rest room. And a phone call. I finally called about getting a dentist appointment. I was hoping to get in this week but the soonest will be next week. 2nd stop was the Loves in Waterloo for food and fuel. Gas at Loves in $.35 cheaper than anywhere else. While we are there, I make more phone calls. A plumber and an exterminator. 3rd stop was our shipper to pick up our car. They have finally moved all the RV's from the employee lot. They seemed to have just moved them into our overflow lot. There are 100+ RV's in our lots but only a few on the load board. The RV's they had in the campground are still there. ... and now there are 100's of RV shells in another one of their storage lots. 100's waiting to be built. After ... after we leave Waterloo, there is a truck in Waterloo coming back to Dodge Center. Easy money, no extra car. But the time was wrong. Missed again. 4th stop was the airport to pick up BB after she has dropped the rental car. We did not get the car back in 24 hours, so it was a three day rental. 5th and final stop is home. Load board US - 317 IA - 33/31 MN - 9 WI - 9 The plumber MAY come tomorrow so we may not be gone tomorrow ... or we may work??
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