Carolina Beach

The Carolina Beach is located in Wilmington, North Carolina. Driving in and around the beach area reminded me of where my sister and mother live in Panama City Beach, FL. The beach was beautiful. We went to two different beaches. Both of which we paid a fee so we could legally drive on the beach. Jason has a Lincoln Navigator the handled well in the sand. We each took turns driving. I had never driven in deep sand like that before. It reminded me of driving in heavy snow. There is one obvious difference between the two. If you take your foot of the accelerator or hit the brakes.....you stop immediately in the sand! It was an overcast day, so the temperature was great. Not too hot, but even though I hid under an umbrella the whole time, I still managed to get sunburned. We relaxed and took naps. Went into the surf. Barbequed some chicken, brats, pork and hotdogs....we weren't hungry on the ride home. All in all a spectacular day. I would highly recommend a day at the beach to relax, to anyone that is within a two hour drive of one.

I will start driving again this evening around 6:00PM. We have around 300 miles to cover by 3:00AM tomorrow. We should make it with a couple of hours to spare. I will write more about Virginia City Beach after we get there. That's all for now,,,,,

Pictures

Heading to the beach

I only drove for six hours yesterday.  Our load can't be delivered until 3:00am on Monday morning. Rather than getting there today and hanging out there in the truck, we ended up going to Jasons home, since it is not that far out of the way.  Jason lives in North Carolina. We are currently on our way to the.beach.  The beach is only an hour or so away.

I drove through Georgia and South Carolina yesterday.  I got to see some Spanish Moss on the trees.  There doesn't
seem to be as much on the tree's as i remeber from when we used to drive as a kid, back and forth fron Chicaco.  We traveled north on I95 yesterday.  The highwwys look different in this part of the country.  There are lots and lots or trees on both sides of the road.  There are even lots of trees in the median!

I have included a picture of the highways.  I also took a picture of an attraction called "South of the Border".  This has to be one of the most unusual and unique places I have ever seen.  The place is huge! There are places to eat, games, fireworks store, demolition derby,  you name it and it is probably there...... I took a picture of it as we were driving past it.  There is a giant sombrero.   I think it is covering a water tank.

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I am writing this from the back seat of Jason's car.  Jason and his wife, Serenade are taking me to the "Carolina Beach" today.  I will take some pictures and post them later.......

Got our marching orders

We just received a message giving us the opportunity to pick up a load in Jacksonville and deliver it to Virginian Beach.  We accepted the load and will be on our way soon.  I had to include a picture of at least one Palm Tree, just to prove I had been in Florida......

Hello from Florida

We covered many states yesterday.  We started in Kentucky and dropped our load in Florida. It's hard to recall all that I saw pass by the window.

I would say that my geography knowledge of this country is poor at best.  It is certainly going to get a lot better.  I never realized that western New York and northeastern Pennsylvania had so many hills.  They call them hills there, in Missouri we would call them mountains!  Everything was so green and the weather was perfect.  High of 83 and lows on the mod to low 60's. 

West Virginia, western Maryland and Virginian all have those same "hills".  Up and down the hills all day.long.  Some of the grades exceeded 9%.  That is steeeeeep!  The thing I will remember the most is how tall the bridges are off the ground.  Rather than bringing the road down the hill, they would build a bridge from peak to peak.  Long way down when you look.  Kentucky is also very green. Lots of agriculture. I did see a couple of fields full of some type of crop I hadn't seen before. It took a moment before I realized that I was looking at a field of tabacco.  We did driveb past a couple of whisky distilleries.  No time to stop and sample.......too bad.

Going through Tennessee we had to drive through Nashville and Chatanooga.  In Nashville I recognized the Tennessee Titans stadium, Opryland and a building that had an ATT&T logo on it.  It looked like it belonged in the movie "Ghost Busters".  It looked like the tallest building in the downtown area.  It has two huge spires or antenna on the top.  Kinda Gothic looking.  As soon as you head south out of Nashville the signs start "see Rock City" and come see "Ruby Falls".  Occasionally there would be the obligatory "come see Lookout Mountain".  Just north of Chattanooga the mountains begin.  Very curvy highways with lots is steep grades.  Here they have the run away truck ramps. I hope to never have to use one.  With the advances in the truck technology,  you would really have to screw up to have to use them. There is another sight to see in Chattanooga. The Tennessee aquarium is located there.

Heading south out of Chatanooga you run right into Georgia. It is less hilly there.  We got to Atlanta around 9:00pm.  You wouldn't believe how much traffic there was!  My mentor Jason tells me that we were lucky to go through in the evening. During the day it is much worse. Since it was dark, the thing that caught my attention was how many and how tall the billboards were there.  I thought Missouri was bad with the sight pollution,  but it isn't anthing close to what I saw in Georgia.

The rest of the drive was mostly two lane country highways all the way into Florida.  All in all another long day ...but just look at what I got to see.....

I'll write more later.......Tom

Sorry no pictures today

It was a long day today.  I logged 10.75 hours behind the wheel today.  We started the day driving to York, PA.  We picked up a load going to the Walmart distribution center in London, KY.  I believe it was 586 miles or something like that.  While I am in the truck with a trainer I get paid a flat rate per week.  After I get my own truck I will be paid by the mile.  For now my trainer and I are concentrating on getting me up to 50 hours of driving time.  Until I log the 50 hours, my Mentor has to sit in the passenger seat while I drive.  The quicker I get there, the quicker he can go into the sleeper and get some rest while I drive.  If he is well rested, he can drive up to 11 hours and then I can drive 11 hours.   We can get better, longer loads to haul.  I get more experience and he can make more money.

It is now 12:30 am and I am waiting to do some laundry.  I just ate a meatball sub from Subway.  I am looking forward to.crawling into my bunk.  As soon as the laundry is done, I will be too.

We don't have a load as of now, but will in the morning when we get up.  OK, time for laundry and then off to bed.

Oh yea, I forgot o mention that I am in a truckstop that is very close to the Cumberline Gap.  It is also the birthplace of Colonel Sanders of the Kentucky Fried Chicken fame.

In PA and on our way to York, PA

We just dropped a load near Allentown, PA and will be heading back to York,PA tomorrow to pick another one.  This load is scheduled to be delivered in London, Kentucky.

The pictures are the truck I am driving and the view from the truckstop we stayed at last night.
I will write more later........Tom