trucker tourist, what about site seeing while on the road?

Sure it can be done! However if you are out there running like you are suppose to you likely won't want to do anything on the few hours you have to yourself not in the truck. On occasion or if you happen to be in a spot where you do want to take a break, then yes go for it. Most truck stops will not let you leave a truck unattended and most companies will not either. Sometimes finding parking can be the biggest pain in the ### out there! Best bet is to stay at a hotel with truck parking that is fairly safe and like the others said either rent a car, cab or walk to your destination. The exception maybe somewhere like Disney in which you can just about park anything! Course it costs $30 just to park a car!

Take it day by day and as you get experience out there and have put down some miles in your book you will find the places that you can relax here and there.

 

You'll need to invest in some flame resistant underwear.

You get to see many different places but rarely have the time to stop and when you do stop it's usually laundry or housecleaning day. You should be able to request "hometime" anywhere it's likely to get a load out of. That would give you a couple of days. I like to take hometime in portland oregon or seattle.

 

If, for example, your company gives you 1 day off for every week on the road, you can take those days any place. That's when I plan to go sightseeing.

 

Thats how we plan to do it also... ... We will be driving as a team and coming back home every once in awhile will be great..

But we also plan some home time days off in other places.. We would like to take 4-5 days off near yellowstone .. then rent and RV and spend a few days sightseeing... after a year or 2 we would like to stop in Dallas for 7-9days and jump a plane down to PDC Mexico again.. That was a blast..I think it can be done if you work it right..

 

Once you get out there you will figure out what you can and can't do. Really shouldn't be a problem though to do a little sight seeing while you are out there though.

 

You will get to see quite a bit while you are working. You may not necessarily get to stop or spend time every where you want but you will at least get the brief experience. I think also you will find that when you do have time off you want to do crap! A lot of times vacation for my wife and I was a hotel room with cable tv! Especially if you are driving team. Once you finally do have a chance to stop moving you will just want to "veg" out!

One thing my wife and I did like to do was that we had our favorite restaurants scattered all over the country and we would only eat out as a treat every once and while (maybe like every two weeks or so) so when we were in a location of one of our favorite restaurants we would get dressed up and go on a dinner date. On I-40 at the top of Flagstaff there is a really neat log cabin restaurant called "Black Barts" and it is kind of like a dinner theatre. There is a truck stop across the street down the road a bit so we could shower up and then walk on down to the restaurant. Wasn't a vacation but sure was nice to get out of the truck, stop moving, and have a really nice meal! Every once and a great while we would also do the dinner, casino thing when we went through Palm Springs or at a few different locations in Nevada. We've done it all, from skiing to eating, hiking, fishing, shopping etc... you name it!

This is the reason we are in this line of work right? For the freedom!

 

Check out my buddy Steve. He's a photographer who pretty much lives in his truck. He's just finishing up his 2.5 week vacation. If you look at his pictures, you'll see that he gets out to photograph Americana REGULARLY.

http://www.18wheelsacrossamerica.net/
http://www.bigrigtravels.com/