Originally Posted by Gearjammin' Penguin

So I'm rolling up 99 to a new facility in Visalia, way early for my load. I figure I can hit a close-by truck stop and squeeze a break in, then I can hammer down and get a full day of driving done. Let's check the truck stop pocketbook. Hmm...Goshen Arco Travel Plaza, just a mile or so from the customer. Sweet.

I pull off at Betty Drive and turn across 99. There it is. Hmm...the guide says "Medium," but it looks more like "Small." Dang, make that "XXS Anorexia Special" since what I thought were parking spots are the diesel islands. Don't know if I want to park here for ten, but I can at least go in and hit the bathroom.

I parallel park with a few other rigs and head for the door. Lots of beat-up 4wheelers and a bunch of scroungy-looking folks in the way with big ol' attitudes. Nope, really not up for parking here. My bowels are getting a bit impatient, though. A quick trip to the can and I'll bail.

Stepping inside, I see that the outside is obviously the best part of the place. Half the lights are out, the place is haphazardly and randomly stocked, and yet more gutter trash...er, "financially disadvantaged" milling around. Some bored-looking chick who looks like she only got the job because she was too ugly to qualify as a lot lizard is at the deli counter, manipulating some stuff that might possibly be considered food...if you hadn't eaten in six weeks and were extremely stoned. I still wonder if the stuff was going into the garbage or coming out. The restroom is just around the corner.

--WARNING: This is about to get really gross.

I bump the door to the men's room open. Friends and neighbors, I've seen bathrooms in dive bars, backwoods gas stations and punk rock clubs across the nation. This one made them all look like a 'head so clean that the Blessed Virgin Mary herself would be proud to go in there and take a dump.'* What wasn't stained or graffiti-covered had obviously been destroyed by rampaging Methanites. The door to the stall hung from one hinge, revealing a sight that I couldn't forget if I stayed drunk for the rest of my life.

The bowl was up to its rim with swampwater and TP, and sitting in the middle, rising high and proud in the spirit of Mt. Kilimanjaro above the Serengeti, was the most enormous turd I'd ever laid eyes on outside the rhino cage at the zoo.

I was torn halfway between losing my lunch and wanting to go get my camera and capture this for posterity. I simply could not believe that anything that huge could possibly have come out of the sphincter of a human being. I swear, I'd rather give birth than pass something like that--even without being equipped with the required anatomy!! And, lying on the bowl--apparently just thrown there--was a piece of paper marked: OUT OF ORDER. Gee, ya think?

I don't know what hurt my brain more: the fact that someone got close enough to drop that paper on the bowl (I'd have demanded a HazMat suit) or that there are apparently people frequenting that place who actually need that warning!!

I didn't even park downwind of the place. I got the hell out, jumped back in my truck, practically bathed in hand sanitizer and Lysol, and hauled out of there before the bacteria ate my tires, rusted my chrome and faded my paint. Never again, folks...I swear I'd get some incurable pathogen just from using the scale at the place.




*C'mon...who hasn't seen Full Metal Jacket?

Originally Posted by Southern Angel

The two worse for me were....

1... Flying J in Carney's Point, NJ
2... TA in Earle, AR.

The food and service was terrible.