2 RV's to Greer SC
... spending the night at Charles City IA
No alarm, no rush.
We leave the house at 8:30. It has rained, is raining and will be snowing here.
Where we are going it they are expecting storms. Lightning, hail, rain and then wind until sometime around tomorrow noon. If we were going to get this RV's, we needed to grab them yesterday and pick them up today. There was no way we could have stayed ahead of the storm, even leaving yesterday so we'll get a small start today.
1st stop is the Loves in Albert Lea. It has rained most of the way so far.
2nd stop is the shipper in IA. They are back to having 100's of RV's in the employee lot. That is usually an 'end of quarter' thing. There are only four RV's left on the load board and there are 100+ in the lot today.
We are the only ones there. Other than getting our paperwork, the yard person stops on their way out of the lot and says I no longer have to leave log copies with them. OK. One less thing to do.
Both RV's check good and we head out.
3rd stop is the Loves in Floyd for fuel. These are diesel so we park on each side of a pump and only use the one pump. The person at the fuel desk thinks they know how to run my card but I end up swiping it a half dozen times and in front of a total of three fuel people before it goes through. It looks like they are giving us $.10 off per gallon before we get our company discount. All helps.
4th stop is across the street at the Wagon Wheel in Floyd. It's a sit down restaurant instead of fast food from Love's.
Meatloaf sandwich and potato salad for me and a club and fries for BB. I also get lemon meringue pie to go. Finally. It's only a couple of weeks past my birthday.
We had hoped to make it to Waterloo but all of 'our' hotels are full. And that is a little closer to the storm and we need to be.
We take an hour plus for lunch and then, as the weather forecast has not gotten better, we make a reservation in the next town. Charles City.
Oh, surprise here at Floyd. The are working on the 2nd overpass and now have all traffic running on the former exit and entrance ramps.
5th and final stop is the Sleep Inn for the night. Because of the storm coming in, we park on the East side of the building. The winds are supposed to be from the west.
We check in around 3 PM and start watching the weather on TV and our computers. There are now tornado warnings, and sightings. One was between this hotel and the next one we planned on staying at. Not sure how many warnings there were at one time but I think it was between 1-2 dozen.
It looks like the worst one was down in AR. But there were also 'several' in IA.
After the storm and rain pass, we head out for a walk.. We walk around the hotel parking lot a few times as there is no sidewalk. Then we decide to walk across the Kwik Star/Trip parking lot for a change of pace.
During our walk so far, the winds were likely in the 10 mph range. When we got past the Kwik Star they were suddenly up around 50 mph. We were holding on to each other as we tried to walk into the wind a little further. Instead we turned and let the wind carry us which also isn't easy. We did look up the wind speeds when we were back in the room, the wind front had just moved through our area.
Yesterday I had said that these RV's didn't have a canopy/awning. They do.
... and I also have a check engine light on, so I had called dispatch when we got to the hotel. I'm OK to run with it, for now.
Food was the leftovers from lunch. The only food close is Kwik Star, which we often do in IA.
Load board
US - 220
IA - 18/15
MN - 8
WI - 5
There are two in MN and one in IA that are under 500 miles if we had still wanted to stay local.
Winds are not supposed to die down until noon tomorrow so we likely won't get our 500 miles in but should still make delivery sometime on Monday.