Quick post

Mick grabbed a few truck pictures as we had a comfort break on the way to L.A. so he wanted me to post them for our sons mate at the fire station back in the UK.

Click on pictures to enlarge them.

This is one I took at a truck stop in Utah

Mick took this 'dog and pup' picture northbound on the I15 near Salt Lake City.

Rolling, sort of!

The rental truck was fixed, and the trailer had been taken to SF by another driver, so we were dispatched to Salt Lake City to pick up an empty trailer for loading in Los Angeles.

This is in Montana.

Great Falls Diner.

Whilst we were waiting in Great Falls for the rental to be repaired we took a walk into town and back over the Missouri River, which as you can see was still partly frozen over.

Plenty of birds here.

Great slabs of ice everywhere.

This is an old converted railway station which has disgusting toilets.

Tiled Sign.

Court House Great Falls, MT.

The bronze doors below are from St Ann's Cathedral in Great Falls.

St. Ann's Cathedral, Great Falls, MT, USA.

This house was just opposite the beautiful Cathedral of St Ann's, and Mick wanted to put a deposit down on it ...as if!

The rest of the journey was a bit of a pain, with more vehicle/trailer problems etc. but it was simply bad luck, and nothing to do with the company.
The scenery was stunning and I will be posting some more pictures later which I snapped from the window as we travelled down and back.
We are currently in the hotel in Canada again, waiting for a truck to be allocated to us so we can get Stateside again (where the motive power is needed).

Click on pictures to enlarge them.

Big Yellow Tractor

Mick was offered a truck to take us to San Francisco, which needed to be returned to Penske, the idea being that we would bring back the repaired truck which had been left down there by another driver.


We were going to High River AB to collect a trailer to take down to Modesto CA, but when we went to pick the tractor up we realised it had no Tripak, so we wouldn't be able to stop in it overnight as it would be below zero.
After a little refresher and some tips from Martin and Val, and the loan of an inverter up at the yard (thanks you two) we took a trailer up to Calgary, then dropped it and went to High River for our California load.


The security people were really helpful to Mick when we went for the pickup (explaining the paperwork etc) , and it didn't take long to hook up and scale off at the plant before heading back to Lethbridge for a night at the hotel.
If there had been a Tripak (for heating), or if we could have idled the truck, we would have slept in it, but 'fraid not.

I took this picture of Mick to show the size of the rig (about 75') after we had slid the tandem to make it legal for California, but also to record a little bit of damage which was already on the trailer when we collected it.

Today we set off nice and early to the yard and after a pre-trip we had a quick short run down to the border where I quickly got my I94 which allows me to visit the USA, and is valid for three months.
The meat inspection is also at Sweetgrass, and we had help from yet another driver (thanks Adrian) who clarified the paperwork for us.
The inspection was a skip load, so we were only there half an hour.

So far so good.

Within a couple of miles of leaving the meat inspection Mick was complaining the truck was not pulling properly and a warning light had come on, and it certainly was chugging a bit, so we pulled over and he had a look under the hood.

He couldn't see anything wrong but he said it was still miss firing when he started it up again, and in the meantime another driver had stopped to see if he could help (thanks Jack).

We followed Jack into the truck stop in Montana and after a few phone calls we had two lads from a local company come out to us.

Their diagnosis was a faulty injector, and the instructions were to limp down to Great Falls MT and take it to the Freightliner garage in the morning, so off we went, and now it's another hotel stay for us and that's the story so far.

It was nice to note that we had plenty of friendly offers of help today from other drivers from the company, and it's just unfortunate that the truck let us down.
Mick will find out tomorrow what is happening with us and the truck, but in the morning he is going to the garage and another driver will be taking the trailer forward to California.



The rental truck still needs to be returned, and the company truck needs bringing back, but it may not be us that do it.

Rockies

Mick got back from his mentor trip over the Rockies, he said he enjoyed it, but he did say it was hard going and tiring, also the scenery was stunning. There are only a few pictures as he was driving mostly at night.












We are just waiting now for confirmation for a trip to San Francisco, hopefully we will be off sometime today, meanwhile Mick has just gone to bed to get rest in case he has to drive late tonight. I will update more as soon as I can.

Fort Woop-Up Pictures

Yesterday we paid a visit to Fort Whoop-Up as the snow was beginning to melt, and when we arrived we were told that the outside exhibit was closed, but some one came out of the rear office and said if we weren't worried about the snow in the compound we could take the key to the various rooms and go and explore at our leisure.

So we did just that!

The girl who was on the counter also said, when Mick asked if there was any coffee, she said "No, but I'll go and make you some", which she did.
What a difference in customer service attitude to the UK, and because it was partially closed, there was no admission charge, although we did leave a donation which was the equivalent anyway.

Santas sleigh?

Me cat napping, if you look there are some cougars, I think, and a bear.

We'd both like to come back in summer to see some of the activities which are here, because they have a smithy and lots of other interesting looking stuff, which were closed down for winter.

Washing hung out to dry.

This may not be in good taste for some readers, but it represents what was happening at the time of the original fort, when the 60 to 70 million Bufffalo were being wiped out.

This may also be in bad taste, but he was only trying the hat on!

Some info is on the High Bridge sign.

O.k I promise that there will be no more pictures of the bridge, and the one at the top of my page which Mick took will be removed soon and I'll replace it with different header picture.

Time for me to take a walk to the L.A. School of Hair Design, to get my cheap haircut, done by students (fingers crossed lol).

Click here to go to the Fort Whoop-Up website

Edit: I forgot to add this picture.

Mick found this little plate on the way back up the hill from the Fort.

Whoop-Up In Lethbridge

Due to unforeseen circumstances , mainly the weather in BC and Alberta including mudslides, avalanches, Micks mentor trip over the Rockies did not go ahead, hopefully he will be going next week.

Wolf , Kelvin, Javi and Inga are now rolling, good luck guys, I am sure we will meet up again somewhere on our travels.

In the meantime me and Mick have been out and about getting some exercise in Lethbridge, including a walk down to Fort Whoop-Up.
These pictures were taken in the valley behind the hotel, where both the High Bridge, the Oldman River and the Fort are to be found.

Click pictures to enlarge.

This is the frozen up Oldman River.

These two pictures below were taken towards the East of Lethbridge, and yes, there is a car under the bottom picture.




We have been sitting in the hotel for nearly six weeks now, and as nice as it is (the company is quite rightly paying for it, till the training is over) we are itching to get down the road and start earning a crust.

Today is the first time in the weeks that we have been here that the temperature has risen enough to start melting the snow, and we went for another walk in the valley in a balmy six degrees.
Watching a train going over the High Bridge today, I saw it reach the other end (one mile and forty seven feet long) , and then kept my eye on the last wagon which was on the bridge, and that one nearly reached the other end before we saw the end of the train, so we reckon it was almost two miles in length!
I will post some pictures of the Fort tomorrow.