Friday, June 27, 2008

Nikki's Ride

As I stated in my last post my daughter Nikki rode with me this last week.

Unfortunately, her trip wasn't as fun in my opinion as her brother's trip. But she stated she had fun and wants to go again in August after she finishes visiting her mother in July.

We left Fort Worth and headed to Amarillo on what has become a regular run to Affiliated Foods from Cargill for me to start off my trips with.

The drive isn't that long, but in that eight hours Nikki got to see quite a lot of things she never gets to see. Her favorite thing it seems is cows. Every time we passed one or even a herd she would moo out the window at them.

Though she did quite enjoy all the horses as well, but not as much as the cows it seemed.

After we unloaded at AF we spent the night in Amarillo then headed up to Cactus to pickup a load heading to Denver, a place she's never been and wanted to see badly. Especially the mountains. However, we stopped off in Dumas at the Wal-Mart to pickup some supplies and to buy her some new tennis shoes.

You should have seen her when we passed the feed yards in Cactus, talk about her going crazy seeing all the cows ... was quite funny.

Our run up to Denver was pretty boring in my opinion, however she did get to see some Antelope and a few Buffalo on the way. Once we got to Denver she was all bug eyed staring at the mountains. She wanted me to detour there so bad it was funny, unfortunately we were not able to.

We completed our unload in Aurora, Colorado outside of Denver and then spent the night in Denver.

The next morning after running some local work moving trailers, we loaded out of Greeley, Colorado heading down to Houston. However we never made it that far.

As we started to pass through Cactus on Thursday with the intent on being back in Dallas on Friday, dispatch called and asked us to do a load swap with another driver in Amarillo.

Apparently he had to get home to Houston (we have 3-4 drivers who live in Houston instead of the DFW area) for personal reasons. We were going to give him our load and take his empty trailer and do another run instead.

After doing the swap I found out that I was going to be better off for the switch. They had us deadhead to Dodge City, Kansas to pickup a two stop load. This was another bit of excitement for Nikki as she got to visit another state and see even more cows at the extremely substantial feed yards surrounding Dodge City.

After picking up our load in Dodge City we headed back to Amarillo for the first stop. Unfortunately since time was critical I drove all night while Nikki slept so she missed some nice sights. However, I did stop in a non-lighted rest area just outside of Stratford, Texas on the way back and woke her up so she could stand outside under the stars in the near pitch black night and marvel at the sky.

That rest area is on top of a butte with no lights for about 20 miles so it is nearly 100% pitch black. The view of the night sky is incredible. The whole spiral arm of our galaxy is visible, and the stars themselves seem alive. You can even see the faint traces of the red and blue clouds of the Horsehead nebula when the sky is that clear. And was it ever clear, and quite cool. An awesome sight to behold.

After unloading at AF again in Amarillo I crashed for a few hours, and then started the run to Terrell, Texas for the second stop at the Sam's DC there.

However, it was Friday and I have no idea when I was going to be back in town so I stopped back at our house and dropped Nikki off. She goes to her mother's on Tuesday for a month, and I didn't want her to miss her time with her. Nor did I want to fight with her about Nikki not being back if we were out a long time.

So here I am sitting at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Irving getting ready to head to Terrell to unload at the second stop in the morning.

All in all Nikki saw a huge chunk of Texas, parts of Oklahoma and Kansas and a good bit of Colorado. Four states in five days, not too bad for a 12 year old on her first real trip away from home.

[Miles Driven Since Last Post: 2350]

1 comment:

spiritwalker said...

Awesome!! So glad to hear that Nikki had a good trip. Thought she might get board. You may have a couple of kids there who appreciate seeing some of the country.

Love,
Ya Mudder