2 RV's to Gilroy CA (delivered)

... spending the night at Gilroy CA

Tried to sleep in. BB was up by 5 AM local (7 AM home time) I was up by 5:30.

We were down for breakfast shortly after they opened. Cheese omelette and sausage plus juice. Juice was not good enough to drink both glasses that I took. But not bad enough to make me sick.

By 8 AM we pull out, an hour before we had planned. And because of today's traffic, we are taking a longer route than previously planned.

Can't drive in CA without mentioning the homeless. The firs thing today I noticed was a double dumpster on the side of the road. Looking closer I saw that everyone was wearing hazmat outfits. The area looked more like a burnt out homeless encampment than a crash site. In this area of the country there does seem to be homeless area's anywhere there is an area that is not a park or already in use. Pond area's and highway shoulders seem to be a favorite. Some area's are not too bad, other area's just stack their garbage outside their tarp.

When we fueled in Winnemucca yesterday, I was about 10 miles short of the drop based on miles to 'E.' By Fernley, I had more range than I needed. By the hotel last night I had 60 miles more than I needed so I was thinking I had put in two, too many gallons. But this AM, half way to the drop the fuel light has been on and I loose my range.

1st stop is the rest area near Westly. That is part of the reason we went this way. Rest area and truck stops. Here we only stop long enough so that I can tell BB I need to stop for fuel. So does she.

2nd stop is at Westly, a Velaro. It is on the correct side of the road, there are two truck stops on the other side of the freeway and one has gas for less. But we are only putting in a few gallons, I put in six and BB puts in three gallons.

When I head out from the station, I now have 80 more miles range than I need. But I start loosing that quickly. By the time I get to final fuel, the low fuel light is on again and I have lost half of that excess range. So between the two of us we spent $50 more on fuel today that we had not planned on spending. But we will still do OK.

3rd stop was the Chevron for final/dealer fuel in Gilroy. Then we go stash BB's RV across the street from the dealer. From there, BB gets in my RV and we drive the two miles to the rental car place where I drop BB.

4th stop is the drop/dealer. I am an hour early. No one else is ahead of me, I leave my paperwork and my keys and walk back to BB's RV. They still had to clean our car so BB had to wait. By the time BB got back it had started to rain.

By the time I was taking BB's plate off her RV it was raining pretty good. And it must have kept raining the two hours it took to check in our two RV's. Because no one was ahead of me they started on my at 12:30 instead of 1 PM. That had us done by 2:30. One hour per RV, even on the small ones. Lots of little stuff written up but no driver issues.

As soon as we are back to the car I call the bus dispatcher. Nothing, "try again tomorrow if you are still in town."

Like frequently happens, we do not eat until after we have dropped. It is now 2:30 here, 5:30 east coast so we do not send in our paperwork. It is only later that we realize we could/should have gotten our release numbers before 3, if we had thought of it.

5th stop was In-n-Out Burger. There is one close and we are delivered. Routine for us. It is still raining pretty good so we do the drive thru. It doesn't move very fast. When we get to the window we find out why. We had ordered at the speaker but by the time we got to the window they had no record of our order. Which meant that is whey the started on our food. They had us pull around the building and someone brought our food out later. Well over a half hour wait in line.

6th and (almost) final stop was across the street at a 'new' Comfort Inn. It used to be a Super 8. They dropped that connection and the next one fell through or got put on hold, so for a while it was called the '835' which is their address. It has only been the Comfort Inn for a week. Nice place, completely redone. Maybe the pictures on the walls are from the Super 8 days but everything else looks new. And cheaper than the Quality Inn where we have stayed at before.

Once we are done eating at the hotel we head to Garlic World to pick up our yearly supplies. Lots of them. Raw garlic, olive garlic, diced garlic, pickled garlic ... plus some dried fruit and some chocolate covered fruit.

No meal tonight. BB had a 'double double' at In-n-Out and it was late. I'm good.

AFTER we are in the hotel we look at the load board, there are a couple of short trips that we could have gotten closer to if we had looked ahead of time.

At first CA was just checking for chains, but a few hours later they were required. We would have had a few hours this AM to cross but that would have been chancing it. Long days but it was worth it.

Load board

US - 159

IA - 3/2

CA - 5

Plan is to be up by 5 AM local to call the east coast dispatcher where it will be 8 AM. IF we get that trip, it is three hours to get to the truck and another 3 hours to the drop. Even if we were closer to the shipper we would not have been able to do both trips tomorrow and still be ready to take a bus if there was one.

So we will do one truck tomorrow and be set to either head to a bus or be close to the shipper for Wednesday.

Did hear from another driver that they sat for five days waiting for a bus, then got one going 300 miles and are now sitting again. We can drive past tomorrow to see what the bus lot looks like.