1 bus to Lubbock TX

... spending the night at Bakersfield CA

(written up two days later)

We had spent the night at the Comfort Inn in Bakersfield.

After we had been in bed for an hour plus, the phone rings. By the time I answer, they have hung up. It was the bus dispatcher. There wasn't a voice message so I assumed it was a mis-dial and went back to sleep ...

After breakfast we get kind of an early start. It is cooler today and we want to stop at a couple of cemeteries and maybe a couple of parks before getting near the shipper by 3 PM.

We are NOT heading in the direction of the shipper when the dispatcher calls. Yes, they have bus for me, ready to pick up now. I wasn't expecting that they would still be dispatching at 9 PM ... that's mid-night eastern time.

While we were on the phone, we missed where we could have turned so it was a few more miles to get heading the right direction. We are still almost four hours from the shipper. IF, if I had called back last night, we would have been 2-3 hours ahead in heading out this AM.

1st stop is in Tulare at a Loves for fuel. Not cheap, but cheaper than other places.

2nd stop was in Merced at another In-n-Out. I got mine without lettuce to make it a little easier to eat while driving. No malt today.

Finally at 12:30 their time we are at the shipper. All goes well, no issues, no real rush. I give BB a 10 minute head start so she can return the rental car and walk to a strip mall. When we drop after hours I just drive into the rental lot but during the day it is quite congested.

I usually come in one end of the strip mall but today there was a cop coming out and I would have had to 'make him' move so I could turn in. I decided to try a different way in. There is, but it is harder to get out.

... and by us not knowing we were working today, we have an extra days car rental. If we had known last night, we would have been back with time to spare on a one day rental.

Traffic is not bad, pretty much drive at the posted at this time of day.

1st stop with the bus is at Westley at the rest area.

Plan had been to stop somewhere on I-5, but as the day went on, we realized that we'd have more cushion if we made it back to Bakersfield tonight. And it should still be daylight.

Should be. There was an accident earlier today so there might be a slow down.

There was. Tonight we lost 45 minutes. AND ... when we went past, they had one more 'lane closed' sign to pick up and traffic would be back to normal. :(

In this case it was a semi that had gone in the ditch and lost it's industrial sized battery he was hauling. Not sure why they had any lanes closed. All the work they were doing was way out in the field on the other side of the fence.

So it was dark. And I usually do not drive after dark. But we had just taken this exact road last night.

We get to the hotel and yes, the big lots are theirs. But by now I had come in the wrong way. And didn't fit the 2nd place I tried so I had to turn around in the dark and get parked.

As we are carrying our things in, we hear 'crack.' We both stop and start look to see what we had dropped ... then someone across the parking lot shouted ... 'that was me ... I promise.' :)

Tonight we do not have a car so we we walk across the street to bar and grill inside the Double Tree. We decide to split a chicken sandwich and some onion rings. Great onion rings. Not sure what was going on at the Double Tree but there were a lot of people at the bar ... I'm guessing a couple of tour buses maybe?

Load board

US - 184

IA - 15

MN - 3

WI - 4