... spending the night at Albert Lea MN

We awake and wait. We watch the load board, we wait for emails. Nothing that is of interest to us.

We ate breakfast. We both had eggs, BB had potatoes and fruit, I had bacon and yogurt.

I finally contacted the auction dispatcher, opps, he had thought he had updated the drivers and had not. But nothing new, nothing good.

And IA did not put anything new out on the load board in the AM. Long morning hitting re-fresh on the computer.

When it gets to checkout time at 11 AM, we check out and head north.

Because of the up tick of Covid cases, our Thanksgiving day host has asked all to self test before we come. So that is firs to our list today.

1st stop - Kwik Star in Clear Lake - Quick change, someone needed to use the restroom ... and I needed gas.

2nd stop is the Walgreens in Mason City. I asked where the self tests were but didn't see them one place and the other place had a price but no stock. So we waited to talk to the pharmacist. When I looked in the first place I should have been looking behind me. There were four tests left, we took two.

When we are done there I in our to go order at Pasta Bella. Good food, we each eat half of our food and save the rest for later. Now that the temps are near freezing we don't need a cooler, just put it in the trunk. We took our time eating and watching the load board. They have started putting trips out so we know they are working. Now we wait. Same as we have been doing.

Finally we decide to get out of the Pasta Bella parking lot. So we drove to Fleet Farm to look for tape. We use take for taking our placards plus a few other things. We have found some yellow tape but I like the blue better. It is darker and wider so it takes fewer pieces. Fleet Farm doesn't have it either.

3rd stop is Culvers in Clear Lake. We haven't had our treat after the last two drops so we have it today. Still only the drive thru open. I don't thing we have seen inside dining open since Covid started a year and a half ago. We eat in the parking lot and watch the load board.

Finally it is 3:30 and if they put anything else out it will be dark before we get the paperwork and get it inspected. So we head to the hotel in Albert Lea.

4th and final stop is the Comfort Inn in Albert Lea. Once we are checked in, we are again looking at the load board and wondering what we are going to do. IA did end up putting about 20 more trips on the load board in the last couple of hours of the day but nothing worked.

There was one Sioux Falls but that was gone quickly. The shortest trips are St Louis but there are zero, -0-, cars from St Louis to MN. Not at any price.

Now that it is after 5 PM we can no longer line up any auction truck work until Monday.

Sometime late IA added a 2nd Bozeman trip. That is a lot shorter than Kalispell so it might work. Maybe. We look at rental cars back to MN. $1,200. $400 a day for three days. So our next thought is we could take a rental car from Bozeman to Minot for $100 for one day and pick up one of the auction trucks and drop the rental car. But now we will not know if we can get one of those trucks until Monday about the time we would deliver.

BUT I decide to look for a non-MN drop. Sioux Falls SD. $100 a day for three days will be $300. We can deal with that. So we made that reservation. Now we have until Monday to decide if we want to do the auction truck on the way home. The car is cheap enough that BB will just follow me if I do the auction truck.

We will see. That means pickup Saturday morning, stay in Rapid City Saturday night. Get to Bozeman Sunday night. Monday deliver in Bozeman and then drive 400 miles to close to Minot. Tuesday AM pickup and drive 600 miles to Shakopee, or close. Drop in Shakopee Wednesday AM and drive another 600 miles via Forest City and Sioux Falls before getting home that night. ??? Maybe.

And then it is Thanksgiving Thursday. We likely would NOT leave again on Friday. More likely Monday or Tuesday. They will still be adding more trips through the end of the month so no shortage of work. There are still three Gilroy, one Vacaville and one Reno that would all get us to CA. Otherwise without a deadline we could do a Kalispell, if the weather holds.

Load board

US - 274

IA - 100/99

MN - 4

WI - 7

One of the WI trips is coming right back to IA but no RV's going to WI right now.

Someone could still get the MT trips before us but one of them has been out there for two weeks. But now that there are two, we want them so someone else could too.

Tomorrow is a Saturday so our permit company is closed. There is a second one that we could use, but I called the SD scale and they will be open and we will be able to get them at the scale. We do not have to have the permits before crossing the state line. All good to know.