Continuing on With Abigail

We spent a few days at home before we went back to Delhi, LA. As we were travelling to Delhi I remembered that those folks from "Duck Dynasty" are located in Monroe, Louisiana. I drive right by the exit for their place of business every time I come through here. I don't really ever give it much of a thought, but since Abigail is almost goofy about those people I decided to surprise her with a visit to their manufacturing facility. Here she is almost hyperventilating over this surprise opportunity to have her photo taken underneath the old sign on the building.

Our load that we got on next had four stops - first one was in Kansas City, Missouri, then we proceeded on to Sioux City, Iowa, Lennox, South Dakota, and our final stop was in Yankton, South Dakota.

Here is what things looked like inside the Conestoga wagon we pulled for this load.

We left out of Delhi, Louisiana on Thursday night, and our first stop wasn't scheduled until Monday morning in Kansas City. The more I drove and the more I thought about my route, I kept on thinking that I could get us up around Branson, Missouri by Friday afternoon, and that would leave us only about two hundred and fifty more miles to Kansas City. So I questioned Abigail to see what she thought about the two of us spending the day Saturday on a little visit to "Silver Dollar City," an amusement park in Branson. She got so excited I thought she would burst! So, Friday night we had a little celebratory dinner in Branson at an all you can eat Crab Leg and Lobster buffet, then we slept soundly in the truck while waiting to spend the following day at Silver Dollar City! Here we are on the shuttle bus that took us from the parking area up to the front gate of the park.

Here's the kind of problems you run into when trying to be creative about finding a place to park your truck when you decide to do something special like this while out on the road. We had a parking spot at a truck stop about twenty miles from Silver Dollar City, but I didn't think it wise to drop my trailer there for an entire day while I'm away. So we telephoned Silver Dollar City and the nice young man who answered told us that if we came into the main gate that an attendant there would direct us to a parking lot where we could park our eighteen wheeler. Well, when we got there we were told that they can't accommodate a vehicle that size, and they wouldn't let us in! So I immediately began looking for anything close by, as I drove away from the park, that might suffice for a parking spot for my rig. I spotted some abandoned buildings with large enough parking areas, but that seemed a little questionable - the last thing I needed was to have my rig towed away while I'm having a great time in the amusement park with my daughter. Finally I spotted an R.V. repair facility that had lots of open space, so I pulled in and politely introduced myself and my daughter and told them our situation while offering to pay them for the chance to park on their property while we spent the day together at the park. They let us park for free, and it was only a brief walk over to the park from their facility. It's always best to have permission if you need to park in an unusual situation. That is what we did, and it all worked out very well for us. This is a great example of the kind of stuff you can do when you need to take a 34 hour reset out on the road, or if you just have some extra time to kill like we did, you can plan ahead and take advantage of some of the local entertainment.

We slept that night right there in the R.V. lot and drove the next day to our next stop where we parked in such a way that even if another truck comes in here later on, he can't get into the unloading area until they unload me first. The un-initiated may think this rude or inconsiderate, but any experienced driver will recognize the value of doing things like this. I can get unloaded in the morning without ever starting my 14 hour clock and if there is some unforeseen delay it won't affect us negatively. This also allows me to get on up to Sioux City, IA tomorrow in time to get my second stop done a day early which will allow me to finish this job early enough on Tuesday to turn in the paper work so that it goes on the next pay check.