I didn't expect THAT!!

I was gone for 11 days! E L E V E N days!! If I woulda know I was gonna be gone for that long I think I WOULD have made Reece drop me off in Mills when we went past on our way out the first day I was gone! I'm kinda glad I didn't... but SERIOUSLY! The longest I was ever away from my kids before was overnight for our anniversary. Being in the hospital doesn't really count 'cause there was usually a baby there with me. And when I was there with Raina, I was in such a fog I don't even remember what was going on.

We left on Tuesday morning, went up to Menahga and unloaded some pallet lumber. Went up to Carlton, MN and reloaded with crane mats going to Lakeview, OR. I thought we'd be back by Sunday! That's how Reece's weeks had been going... until I got in the truck. I will have to say tho', I have added more yellow on the map that I got from Tom! He was the Safety Director at Golden Ring when I came around. That guy was awesome! Just like everybody else there... All I hafta do is whine and everybody in the place comes down on Reece's head like a ton of bricks. :D Ain't that jest mean?

Anyways... Tom gave me a map and told me to guard it with my life and never let Reece use it. See, Reece has issues with maps. He likes to baptize them. With coffee. And such baptism doesn't go along with a Paper Map's religion, so they rebel and tear out their pages and make their ink unintelligible to human eyeballs. Oh and he also likes to walk on them with dirty boots. Not only that but he uses them as tables when he eats and spills ketchup on them. (He's got a laminated Trucker's Atlas now and that kind believes in the same kind of baptism as he does so they get along great.) Pardon me, I got off on a tangent. MY map, has paper pages and I highlight every road I've ever been on in the truck. Well... I WOULD if they were all actually on the map. You see, some of the logging roads down in Texas that I navigated Reece on to aren't on the map, so in that area there's just a big yellow spot to signify that we were somewhere in that blank space at one time in our lives. I also have it written in there that we saw 126 alligators when we went through Alligator Alley in Florida, but that's a different story.

We went through West Yellowstone, MT on our way out to OR. They get SNOW there! But actually, they had less snow this year than when we went through there the first time! This time I could see over the snowbanks on the side of the road! It was actually kinda boring! Then we drove through a whole pile of God's Country in Idaho. Southern Idaho that is. Down there in the boonies where they have a few houses along the roads with no mailboxes. I was quite concerned with those people's mail situation. But never fear. I found their mailboxes... they were out in God's Country Southern Oregon. 7,000 mailboxes in a clump with not a house to be seen.

I will try to explain to you something that I said that made Reece crack up and laugh for an hour or so. If it doesn't amuse you I apologize. We were driving along and we came past this quarter mile long driveway with the snow plowed off about 40 feet on one side and 20 feet on the other. At the end of the driveway was a trailer house with a modest garage. Parked in front of the house was a small car (read VERY small. Like... an Escort.) Parked next to the garage was a small pickup. (Read Toyota or something) And parked in front of the garage was Ye Olde Behemoth Grandpappy's X-Quality High Grade Oversize Payloader. I said, "WELL! That guy's SERIOUS about his snow removal! He's gonna make SURE he can get his WEENY little car out of his driveway!" And Reece laughed for an hour. I dunno... maybe it was only 15 minutes.

Then as I said, we got in to Southern Eastern Oregon. And that, my friends, is home to the fake cattle guards, wild cows, and Wagontire, Population 3. The only building in the whole booming metropolis was a cafe and it was closed. There wasn't even a dead skunk on the road! Now let me explain about the fake cattle guards. Have you ever seen them? They have the same sides as a REAL cattle guard, but without the hole in the ground and the metal for you to clatter over. These just have white lines painted on the road. Oh. And the wild cows? Ya know what your normal cow crossing signs look like. Just a happy little Bossy standing there in the middle of the road waitin' to get milked, right? Well, these ones out here in the back country have a cow with horns, tail in the air, facing you, kinda looking like the cow that jumped over the moon. I would show you a picture, but as soon as I said I was gonna take a picture of the next sign I saw, we didn't see any more. SIGH.

We dropped our crane mats in Lakeview and went flaming over a road that some dumb lady told Reece was closed to trucks over 60 feet. We're 70 feet but I informed him that that was the way the people in Klamath Falls had told us to come, so after arguing with him for 5 minutes, I ordered him to call them and ask. When he hung up he says, "Well, they're sending us down 140 so it must not be closed!" I said, "REALLY?!" We loaded there with green veneer and brought that to Rogue River on Saturday morning. (The people in Rogue River were extremely nice! They were actually, technically, closed but they still unloaded us, so we sent an email to the dispatcher telling him that they are only open 24/5 instead of 24/7 like he had told us.) From the spot we loaded in Klamath Falls we could see Mt. Shasta in California! I thot that was pretty cool since I had heard of Mt. Shasta but I figured I was never gonna get to see it since we try to boycott CA as much as possible. :D

I have more to talk about but I think this is probably about long enough for one afternoon's reading isn't it? When I get back you make sure to remind me to tell you about the beautiful coffee we got in Camano Island, WA. And we didn't buy any for Daryl. SIGH... such wicked people on this earth! ;p