Up at 7 am.   Have to be at shipper by 8 am.   Heading in for caffeine and some breakfast.   Wendy’s has a new sausage, egg and cheese sandwich with hollandaise sauce.  Mmmmm.  Bet that’s good.  Greg is going to give it a try.   I’m sticking with the plain bacon biscuit.  

8 am.  Arrived at shipper.  We came by yesterday to see if we could get in earlier but the place was deserted.  We thought we had the wrong place. It was kinda spooky looking.  Doesn’t look much better this morning but there are a few cars in the parking lot and some guys in the warehouse.   They started loading us right away which is great.  Shouldn’t be here too long.   

It’s not a bit scary either to see a white stream of something coming down the driveway in to the drain at a chemical company!  The name is Chemway after all. 

8:20 am.  All done with the loading but according to DOT we have to wait another 15 minutes as you have to clock 30 minutes load time whether you use it or not.   Gotta love government regulations! We definitely loved the load time.   Any time it’s a live load you hope it doesn’t take 4 hours.   This was a nice change!  

Sun is shining, a little cloudy, a little muggy.   And we are heading to New Jersey.   Here is a picture of where we’re going.  I bet traffic is just wonderful! 

We passed this house, Octagon Hall, going to the shipper.  It’s a neat house with a lot of history. http://octagonhall.com

4 pm.  We were able to stop in Ashland for a few minutes and have dinner with mom.   We went to Bob Evans.   Couldn’t stay long but it was a great visit!!  Thanks for supper mom!

DG:  Yes, thank you Ruthie.  It was good to see you. Your hair looks marvelous. 

I forgot to include these pictures from our lunch yesterday in Nicholasville.  I hesitate to call it a truck stop as it had only five spots for truck parking and no showers or laundry, but it had a dynamite lunch counter, good home cooked food and something I’ve never seen on a buffet before, broccoli casserole.  Awesome. The rest of the food was good as well. 

I had the roasted chicken and that is the broccoli casserole at the top of the plate. And a bottle of Ale-8, the Kentucky soda of choice. 

So we got as far as Frametown and stopped at a rest area for the night. It was still light out so I went over to a table for a smoke and some reading. 

And another Ale-8. Well, I didn’t get very far into my smoke when we encountered Ricky Joe. He’s the attendant here at the rest area and he came by our table with something in his hand saying something about Silence of the Lambs.  He was several feet away and was holding his hand out to show us what he was holding but I didn’t understand him so he came closer and said that what he had in his hand was like the moth that was in Silence of the Lambs and just now I got the reference. It wasn’t in the movie that I remember but is on the movie poster. See picture below. Then he proceeded to tell us about the moth. Apparently this particular moth attacks bee hives, tricks them into letting it in where it proceeds to eat the honey and the larva and then lays its own eggs in the hive. According to Ricky they can be very devastating.  He lost several hives to them. 

In the bottom picture you can see the eggs. I forget how many thousands of eggs he told us these things can lay in a day. 

Well, the story only got better from there. Having no bees he set out to trap some more to refill his hives. Said he uses lemon grass oil as an attractant. And there apparently are bee traps you put the oil on to attract and capture the bees then you put them in your hives. Well, at first he was having no luck. Then sadly his father died last week and they just buried him this past Saturday.  Now here’s where it gets interesting. According to Ricky, He went to check his bee trap Monday evening and it had a swarm in it. He took it to one of his hives, put the bees in and returned the trap to the same tree where he had it before. The second evening, he had another swarm. Now according to Ricky and his knowledge of conventional wisdom when it comes to trapping bees, you should not be able to attract another swarm to the same place you just caught a swarm, but he ignored that and put the trap right back in the same place and for five days in a row has been successful in trapping a swarm of bees. Now his hives are all full. All three of us attribute this to spiritual help from his father who had recently passed. 

There were a couple more ghost stories but I’ll leave them for later. 

Hope you all had a blessed day. Goodnight and God bless. 

Annie – Yes, a very interesting visit with Ricky.  Everything from his dad and bees to his moms death, a light over his house which his pastor told him meant he would be next in his family to die to several fire fighting stories.  And one story about a crick across the street. Wow!  You just never know what people are going to say.  

Well, turning in.   About 500 miles to go tomorrow.  Goodnight y’all