Day 21

left: Grand Canyon, Arizona at 6:30am
arrived: Childress, Texas at 9:45pm
States: Arizona, New Mexico, texas
Via: Grand Canyon; Flagstaff, Arizona; Amerillo, texas; Albuquerque, New Mexico;
Distance: 818 miles

We got up at 5:30am to watch the sun rise over the Grand Canyon which was spectacular. You could see the light fillingthe Canyon as it rose. It really is hard to appreciate how big the canyon is... It's huge!At 6:30am we hit the road for Dallas. We stopped in Albuquerque in New Mexico for a while (simply to find the IsotopesStadium) but to be quite honest it's a bit of a crap hole (and by a bit, I mean total)). We crossed back into the central time zone at about 2pm upon crossing into Texas. Speed inforcement had been pretty lax since Nevada so we kept drivin in Texas about 85 to 90 mph..bit of a mistake.No more than 15 miles into Texas, an unmarked police car went by (we're not sure which it was but we picked itup on the detector (which are legal here). About 15 mins later a marked State Trooper(cowboy hat and all) drove by and stared across at us.When he crossed the median and came up behind us it was time to start worrying. He drove right up behind us for a minute or so (presumably running the plates). He then pulled even with us and stared in for another two or thre mins. Obviously, we had slowed down at this stage and I took out a map to play the confused forlorn tourist card. He drove on then really slowly ahead. I guess that's the Texas warning. We stuck to the limits after that.We drove through Amerillo after that, which is actually quite a big city.Just as it was getting dark, at about 7:30pm we were driving through endless vast flat lands when we drove into one holygrape sandwige of a lightning storm. It was the most violent storm I'd ever seen. Lightning every second or so. I was deadimpressed with getting a photo of a forming tornado (untill later when we saw a fully blown motha' tornado). We drove on foranother hour or so until the storms got really bad. There were tornado warnings then so we stopped in Childress, about halfway across texas. It was then I got the photo (below) of the tornado lit up by the lightning strike. Turns out, when peoplego tornado hunting, the flatlands outside Amerillo is where they go. It had more tornados than anywhere else in America.



Quite the cross road. Pheonix, the one city we never made it to on the road trip

















The sun coming up shining into the Grand Canyon.











Where we were now.















Howdy!














Is this the way to Amerillo? Apparently, yes, yes it is.












The first tornado forming.














The tornado lit up by lightning as it was coming towards us. I really couldn't believe what I was seing at the time. In hindsight it probably wasn't such a good idea to stay out and watch it in all the lightning but, sure if there's any way to go, it'd certainly be the most exciting.