Dakota Snow.

____Day 1: Cancelled. " If you can't run with the big dogs, then stay on the porch." But I'm not even going out on the porch; there's a raging blizzard and anyway, the Interstate 29 is closed in North Dakota. The peat-moss for Texas will have to wait an extra 24; snow-ploughs have been ordered back to base due to white-out conditions.

Interstate 29, Tuesday morning.

____Day 2: It's 9 o'clock before the road conditions website of North Dakota's Department of Transport shows that the Interstate, south to Fargo, has reopened. A long day follows; with a busy border as everyone sets off at the same time. A late finish at Percival where there is talk of another Winter-storm coming across from Colorado.

Nasty.

____Day 3: I'm away before any snow fall and take the new Interstate 49 down to Joplin. The snow plastered northbound trucks warn of forth-coming bad weather and just after the Bobby Hopper Tunnel on Interstate 540,  I encounter the biggest, wettest snowflakes in the World. There are over fifty types of snow; winter driving across North America will bring you into contact with most of them.

D16 Volvo with big kennel.

____Day 4: A late start due to a late finish but the peat-moss is unloaded by 10 o'clock and there is no hurry for the rest of the day. Just a one hundred mile run across the Oklahoma border to Grant; the Choctaw Travel Plaza, next door to the Choctaw Casino and Resort. A short hop to tomorrow's reload at Boswell.

389 Peterbilt at Sapp Bros. Percival, Iowa.

____Day 5: "Coffee black; cigarette. Start the day like all the rest." The lyrics of the legendary Don Williams and as I pull out at 7 o'clock in the morning; twelve hours later, the Country and Western old'timer will come on stage at the casino's event centre. Sometimes you are in the right place at the right time, sometimes not. Wood chips to Canada; and I can hear echoes of  "Doesn't Canada have enough wood chips already, eh?" But these are "Smoking" wood chips; adding such flavours to meat as Hickory, Apple, Cherry and Mesquite. An old-style open-air wood yard drying-out from a down-pour; it takes all morning to load the big bags to the 80,000lbs max.

Old Wood Yard at Boswell, Oklahoma.

____Day 6: A full day's driving on the Friday took me to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Close enough to get home, late on Saturday night. Temperatures high enough to give a trouble-free run.
____Overall Distance: 4336 km.

362 Peterbilt Cabover with Super Single Tyres on the Drives.