Paducah, Kentucky

Sitting at the Pilot truckstop in Paduchah where we have stopped for the night, showered and fed, with good internet access.

After unloading the tyres in Cochrane Ontario on Tuesday morning we ran down to Missisauga and squeezed into a spot at the really crap Pilot truckstop late in the evening, ready to run to our pickup in Brantford Ontario the following morning.

We were at the yard ready to load in a timely fashion, but they took an absolute age to get around to us!
The load was for two separate drops in South Carolina, Spartanburg, then Greenville which we duly set off with, crossing into the USA over the beautiful Bluewater Bridge at Sarnia Ontario.

The electrics in the truck had been playing up a little the last few weeks, but I had checked everything I could, and I assumed it might just be tired batteries, but on the way south it became clear that the alternator was buggered!
A quick call to the boss, Ryan got us a stop at a Peterbilt garage in Knoxville Tennesse, where after about an hour we pulled away with a new alternator fitted and working a treat. This was much better than the Pete dealer in Lethbridge where a simple service had us sitting in the workshop for ages before anyone even put a hand to it, apart from tipping the hood, and the whole deal took two days, for a simple service and some small repairs, and they clearly didn't see a problem with the electrics!

We crossed mountains in North Carolina at night, and feel sure that we will have missed some beautiful scenery, if the views we got in the mountains further north were anything to go by.
The two drops were done quickly and we kept on running, down to the tyre yard in Lexington to load some small (smallest we've carried yet) 11'4" off road tyres for Alberta.
An early overnight stop in Madison, Georgia due to the curfew time, and after greasing the truck and trailer at 5am, we ran up to where we are now, Paducah. We would have liked to have got to Mount Vernon, but an RTA on the highway stopped us for a while, so we lost some daylight time.
Tomorrow we will get up into Iowa, then Monday should see us stopping at Watertown South Dakota , where fellow trucking blogger Chris Arbon recommended a good place to stop.
These few shorter days should see us rolling the hours around without busting them and having to reset anywhere, and letting us get up to Claresholm for a cosy couple of nights at the Lazy J Motel. on Wednesday night or Thursday morning (weather permitting).