WET AND WILD

May 15/10

Our second night in Amarillo, Texas was just fine but we were ready to head west into New Mexico as rain and thunderstorms were on the way. We woke up to cloudy skies and managed to get on I-40 west before 8:30. It started to rain about half an hour after we started out and we could see big black clouds on the horizon ahead of us. In the flat land, it’s hard to tell how close the storms might be.

We stopped at a rest area inside the New Mexico border for a quick break and it was very black there with the wind coming up. We hurried back out so that we could keep going west while the storm was coming east. It was dark as night, then the rain started hammering down and the lightning was striking areas ahead of us. I saw one bolt that sizzled on the ground for a while so I know it made contact with something. We kept going with full determination.

You know that it’s raining hard when the road surface is covered with water while you are going up a hill. There was so much water on the road at times that we had to follow in the tracks of a semi to avoid hydroplaning. We hit one patch of water that blinded us completely for a few seconds but Big Red (our truck) and our trailer stayed firm on the road. I will admit that there was a lot of praying going on during this adventure.

It all settled down after an hour or so and I even took my turn at driving on this leg. We arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico at noon (time zone now back to Mountain Time) and have settled in to the American RV Park west of town. Nice to be here safely and we plan to stay for a few days.

Albuquerque Highway Interchange