Long day.  I pushed it hard.  It's Sunday and the roads are always much freer of traffic than on any other day.  Get the miles in and get them over with.

Well this started yesterday tho.  I was determined to make it to the Hardy's last night in White House, Tennessee. Yes, that's the name of the town, you can look it up yourself. There is a Hardy's there and a small truck parking  lot behind it.  I stopped there the last time I took this trip to West Virginia, there aren't that many spots but it wasn't full, I was hoping for the same this time.  At the loading plant at 11:00 am, out of there and drove out the day. 

On the way up, I saw a truck blow a scale - there is no PrePass at this particular scale, if the scale lights are flashing, you best pull in there.  I was right behind this truck and saw that ...and.....saw the
State Trooper sitting there at the scale house with his brake lights on.  He wasn't even checking weights unless they can do that remotely?  I dunno, but I saw the Trooper start moving as soon as the truck blew by it and I knew what was happening.  It's a pretty good fine from what I hear for getting caught doing that. 

I pulled into the station and pulled up on the scale - nothing. No other vehicles there.  It's usually that way at this place, one Trooper and no-one else. Well, he was gone.  So I pulled through, drove on up the road a few miles and there it was.  The Trooper with that truck pulled over. 

A few hours later, driving through Little Rock, Arkansas, my GPS was telling me to get off the highway and take a detour? Whyyyyyyyy?????  Both GPS's showing red on the road.  Figured an accident.  I got off at the exit and then proceeded to drive on a frontage road for a couple of miles past a LOT of stopped/slowed traffic. When I got up to the scene, it was a very gruesome accident. I mean, it was bone chilling.  It was a late model Jeep and parts of that vehicle were scattered all over the place.  The Jeep itself was mangled, it had slammed up against a bridge overpass concrete post -  huge thing.

I just sat there for a while lookiing at firemen working the scene. No ambulances there.  A sheet over the driver's seat area  The person was obviously dead, the firemen weren't doing a rescue operation. This was a "retrieve the body" operation.  We all sat there for probably 10 minutes waiting for them to let us pass, this accident was affecting both the Interstate and the frontage road, just that I passed hundreds of vehicles so I knew GPS didn't steer me wrong - IF - I was getting through there anytime soon.

But getting through there wasn't really on my mind.  I see things like this and it gets me to thinking about life. I'm not going to go into all of that, it's getting very late and I"m starting to finally get tired.  I have 10 hours to sit here tho, no choice in that matter.  But I did sit there watching State Troopers doing their measuring stuff and firemen going back and forth and moving around, but not at the Jeep itself,  I didn't think at first there was anyone in the Jeep because of their actions, I didn't understand why they were even there or what they were doing.  Well, when we were finally let by, I got to a point where I could look and see what's under the sheet. 

I probably shouldn't have looked, but the firefighters got the best of me: is there any one really under there?  Cause when they put the sheets out, there is a or more than one dead person underneath there.  Right? That's what I always thought and not the first time I"ve seen the sheets and the dead people.

This was gruesome. Gut wrenching.  Just mind shattering stuff here. This isn't the movies, this was real. This person's head was smashed into the steering wheel. The skull was caved in, eyes bulging out, face contorted. I mean, contorted.  It was sickening to see a person's life ended like that.  The body was shifted at different angles. I didn't take a pic of that, I took a pic of the vehicle.  I'm just not going to do that to a dead person. I can only imagine those pics getting back to loved ones, no and no. 

I have myself to blame for looking under there, but, it isn't the end of my world, I hate seeing that stuff and it affects me, but I've seen it many times before.  I've seen hundreds and hundreds of accidents out on the roads. It's just you don't normally see the dead.

Well, I moved on from that.  When I got to the Hardy's many hours later, it was jammed packed.  That was disappointing. I know it sounds dumb, but the coffee at that Hardy's is out of this world.  Just amazing stuff. I couldn't find anywhere to park and the Loves' down the street was jam packed again.  I took off.  I'm driving and frantically looking at the app for parking spaces at truck stops.  The next place up the road showed "lot is full".  I bypassed it,  I was running out of time.  I pushed it that day to get past Nashville and not have to deal with traffic.  Lol, tho I probably should have thought about the fact that "traffic" anywhere on a Sunday isn't going to be anything near the same as traffic during the weekday. 

I saw a Matco truck stop on the app, it hadn't been updated.  It's up to truck drivers using the app to update wherever they're at.  I drove up to to it and lo and behold, ONE open parking spot.  Next morning, after getting a decent cup of coffee - not the best but not bad - I drove it on out to West Virginia, only stopping for fuel and making haste of that. I wanted hours left over for driving out of West Virginia. The reason is because I have not been able to drive past Lexington for want of hours ot drive and anywhere to stop. 

There's a lot of factors to today and getting as far as I did. But I got to the plant in Charleston, dropped the trailer at a holding location, hooked up to the trailer at the delivery station, dropped it  elsewhere, back to the loaded trailer, backed it up to the loading station, then back to the empty trailer, got paperwork done and got the hell  out of there.  When I was approaching Lexington, it was obvious that I could get across the Bluegrass Parkway and to a truckstop well before I would run out of driving hours.

The Petro down the road from Elizabethtown was my goal.  Now, through all of this, I was talking to my son, it's his anniversay and I was congratulating him.  It'a already been a year since he got married!! Anyway that was keeping me awake and I was very glad to hear from my son.

When I got to the Petro exit, I already knew that I could drive another hour - so I did! I figured to try and make it close enough to make it back to the yard tomorrow. It may or may not happen and if it doesn't, oh well no biggies. It's about 650 miles to the yard from where I'm at. I'll hit Nashville at a non-rush hour traffic time, I should get through there fast enough. 

Dang there was so much more I wanted to write.  But 'm fading now.  Time to go to sleep.