Happy Birthday, Susan!!!

It rained a quarter inch on the 21st.  Susan said that was when the road became too slippery to drive until some sun dried it out. Then, on the 22nd, it rained another half an inch.  The weather forecast was for rain every day until next Monday. We had resigned ourselves to being stuck in the wilderness for days.  Happily, I might add.  We were having so much fun visiting with Roy and Susan.  They seemed happy enough to have us hang around for longer than expected too. But, Andy is like a horse headed for the barn.  He wants to get home as soon as possible.

This morning, in spite of the forecast, the sun shone brightly and Roy invited me to ride the gator with him to the mailbox and check out the road conditions. The rain usually starts in the afternoon.  We headed out the long, long driveway which is in great shape because Roy keeps in graded and graveled. The subdivision road was not as good but seemed good enough to drive Scamp out.  There were just a few places that were muddy. The county road was also in good shape.  We agreed that I could drive out with no problems. Andy was ready to roll when we got back and reported our findings. So, we hurriedly packed our bags and put our stuff into the RV.

We did take a few moments for goodbyes, hugs, and pictures. Susan wanted to pose with us by Scamp.

Then I took a picture of Roy and Susan with the scenery in the background.

It was getting cloudier. Roy and Susan followed us to the county road to make sure we got out of the neighborhood alright.  If we had not, Roy could have pulled us out of a ditch with one of his tractors. The county road did have numerous muddy spots, one of them had deep muddy ruts across the road.  I was able to blast through the mud without incident. It took us forty-five minutes to get to the paved road.

There were some cattle in the road that gave me pause.  Several moved out of the road to our right.  These two stayed on the left shoulder to watch us pass. We did get a few sprinkles on the windshield along the way. Then we could see the sky darkening behind us as we headed east.

We drove back up to I-40 the way we had come so I got a chance to take pictures of some of the rock formations I missed on the way south. There are massive bluffs, but these giant boulders simply jut straight out of level ground.

This was a Large Landscape day.  Every land feature was large. Tall mountains. Massive mesas. Grazing land to the horizon.  Big sky. Grand vistas for what seemed to be hundreds of miles. I felt tiny in the middle of it all. Every time we crested a hill there was a new panorama.

We stopped in Albuquerque to eat lunch and call Susan to let her know we had made it to the pavement. We ate burritos.  The mountains east of Albuquerque were covered more densely with trees.  Then we could see forest to the horizon. I sang America the Beautiful in my mind.

We stopped for the night in an RV park in Tucumcari, New Mexico.