1 bus to Des Moines IA

... spending the night at Ankeny IA

Almost 10 hours sleep for both of us. Day eight of our road trip. We both slept good.

Lots of stuff in our breakfast back this AM. Some places give us our breakfast in a sandwhich zip lock bag. Others do the lunch size bags, this place had the Walmart sized bags. Yogurt, fruit cup, muffin, breakfast bar and a bottle of water.

We head out at 8:30 AM. Close to the same as every other day other than we are in our home time zone.

1st stop is less than a 100 miles down the road at York at the Petro. I do my last fuel stop there, now all I have left is fill with DEF and get it washed. I've never asked how full the DEF is supposed to be, shipper is paying so I deliver it on full.

One scale before Omaha, I am under 26,000# but I get the 'truck must exit' sign. I thought the scale might have an issue with the driver ahead of me. Trucks are supposed to be in the right lane for the mile before the scale. He wasn't. Everyone is supposed to use their blinkers when they change lanes/exit. He didn't. But we both got the green light after being weighted.

Dispatch called again about the truck in IA to St Cloud, I tried to call them back but dispatch wasn't an option from the number they called from. And even finding that out took 60 seconds. Sorry, every other location I call I get directly to dispatch or have to leave a message. Not interested in punching in numbers after numbers to get a hold of someone. Just thought I would be courteous and give them a call back. Now there is also a 2nd one from Dyersville to Dodge Center. That would be a different dispatch ...

2nd stop was at a Jimmy Johns in Council Bluffs. Looks like it used to be a bank. We order, then the cashier has to run to the restroom. Each restroom is just a single user. BB waits for a while and then decides if the person is taking that long, she doesn't want to use it after them. I got an 8 inch ham and cheese and bb got a 'Slim.' We weren't in a rush so we took 45 minutes, I would have only needed a slim.

3rd stop was Underwood rest area. Just 15 miles down the road, but plenty of stalls in the rest room. Another couple of hours and we are at ...

4th and final stop, The Sleep Inn in Ankeny.Yes, if we had pushed it the last couple of days and left the motel at 6 AM today we could have made delivery. But our rental and plans were for Wednesday so we stayed with that.

At check in, I only had to show, not give, them my credit card and my drivers license. This was the first place we stayed after being off the road because of the virus and it has been the only one who no longer doesn't have us sign for anything.

Virus ... MN is down to three deaths a day. ICU are down, cases and hospitalizations are up. We are still often the only two people wearing masks. Even the buffets are open. Some places still don't have indoor seating or ordering but fuel, food and motels are all open. Which is all we need driving.

We saw lots of transporters today. Lots of Amazon Prime vans, one group of five plus smaller groups and singles. Also one group of center driver mixers plus singles. Cruise America RV's, other RV's, school buses, trucks, we are on the move.

Not much for excitement, one guy blew his horn at me ... maybe because I was doing 62 in the left lane in a 65 ... but it was a left exit and I was just about under the exit sign ???

Father-in-law is not doing any better so it looks like his days are numbered. Not sure if we will try to see him tomorrow evening when we get into town or wait until Wednesday and go down.

Thursday home to mow the yard and pick some veggies and weeds and then Friday AM head up to the north shore for the weekend.

Got a message that next week is 'Road Check' week. Where all states tally and report how many violations. I call it vacation week. We have been going to the north shore with family for the 15 years I have been driving. It works out good. This will be the smallest group we have ever had. Just us and one daughter and her family. I think one of the first years there were 20-30 of us and most of us slept in the main house. That only happened one year and people started getting their own motel rooms.

Tomorrow, if we are lucky we could be delivered in three hours and then head the 4-5 hours home.

Load board

IA-22 (plus 4)

MN - -0-

WI - 2

US - 116 so IA is not in the half to 1/3 of the loads right now. The board is an interesting mix across the states.

To eat, we ordered online and walked across the street to the Outback. Instructions are to 'wait in our car,' but we are walking so when they didn't come out right away we walked in. Our food was sitting there, they handed it to us and we were on our way back.

I get chicken alfredo and BB got chicken something. BB was asking me when we ordered if I wanted something different this time because of how spicy my chicken was last time. This time it was her chicken that was spicy, they might have mixed up our meat last time. Good food, again.