The "14 Hour" Trip

So we headed off this weekend to lovely Lehi UT to buy hay cubes.  We decided it made sense to make the trip worth while, so we bought a semi load.  That way we have enough for us, plus our neighbor, and anyone else who may need some.
We lit out early Saturday morning.

Before we left Tom says to me, "I can't drive 14 hours straight, you are going to have to drive some." Normally I am fine with that, but this time we were in a Semi, which I have never driven.  My response was, "Absolutely not!"  Not only is it illegal, but I'm not that good of a driver anyway, there is no way he was going to put me behind the wheel of an 80,000 lb weapon, while he slept.  I told him I would buy him a hotel room instead and we would take our time and be much safer.

We stopped at a place in Rock Springs WY for brunch.  Obviously my reputation precedes me, because they put this sign up right before we got there.  I love the quarter pony rides!

When we pulled in to the place with the hay cubes I saw this guy and had to take his picture.  As soon as I saw him I thought of Andrea (Mustang Saga).  Now I will admit, this is not the first time I have seen donkey, but the first time I had taken the time to "meet" one.  I've been reading about George, Alan, and Lucy at the 7MSN ranch, and then Pedro and Bob at Mustang Saga, and have developed a new appreciation for these asses.  I can see now the fascination.  They are completely different personalities than horses.  Even the look in their eyes are different.

He was very friendly and I wish I could recall his name. But I enjoyed meeting him for sure!

This guy is" Hippie" He is a mini Donkey and what a little cutie he was.  They also had some ponies, and some gorgeous quarter horses. 
I have more pics but they are on the good camera which is at home. These were just my phone pics.

We had a wonderful time meeting Larry and Marilyn, who own the company "Dry Creek Shavings".  The sell pine shavings and haycubes. Their son Rusty came and loaded us up because Larry is in a cast and cannot run the loader. We also got to meet Rusty's family, who just got back from the local barrel races.

Here is Tom banding all the totes together.  Our trailer has curtain sides so we could not afford to have any totes tip and fall on the curtains. 
We ended up with 21 tons of haycubes which comes out to 22 totes. 
We weighed at the port of entry on the way in to UT so we knew exactly how many tons we could have and still be in the legal limit of 80,000 lbs. We came up with a total of about 300lbs under the limit.
About an hour later at the WY port of entry, they weighed us again....we were 1,000 lbs overweight!  The lady was convinced that we were from a big ranch and that we make our living off of hay cubes. 
She tried to sell us a permit to drive to Evanston to offload the 1000lbs of haycubes and then come back. 
She says, "Surely you must make some sort of profit off of your horses, why else would have them?"

She has obviously never owned a horse!

I laughed so hard at her comment I thought I was going to pee my pants. 

We finally convinced her that we are hobby horse owners and no profit was coming from this load of haycubes and let us off with a strong suggestion to unload some before we headed on.

We found a nice hotel in Evanston, spent the night, and got up the next morning ready to hit the road.

Tom went out to start the truck.....we had a flat!

We ended up driving with the flat an extra 30 miles to find a shop to change it for us. Which took 3 hours!

2 miles later...we had another!  Now we were out of spares.  We limped along at 60 mph while I texted Dan, Tom's top mechanic.  He grabbed the service truck and some tires and headed towards us.

We finally met up just outside of Rawlins.  Oops!  He brought spares for 10 hole wheels, the trailer has 8 hole wheels.

I took this through the side view mirror so I didn't get a tire iron thrown at me! 
This is Dan and Tom trying to get a tire mounted onto the correct rim with ether and a match.  The wind was blowing 50 mph.  They finally gave up and we limped the final 100 miles home short a tire. But we made it safe and sound!  48 hours after we started!

I was glad I had made the decision not to try and drive, otherwise we would have been dealing with flats in the middle of the night.  See...sometimes it pays to be a wussy!

Anyone need any haycubes?????