Colorado trip- road trip there

Back in May we took a trip to Colorado to help Sarah and Adam move.  It was a fun week!

The first day and a half we caravanned.  Sarah drove her SUV,  Brian drove Adam's truck, towing a U-Haul trailer behind.  Adam drove a very large U-Haul truck.  I mostly sat in the passenger seat of Sarah's car and tried to keep the kids quiet.

We stopped about an hour north of Houston at the Buc-ees.  Mike and Christy surprised Adam and Sarah by being there for a chance to say good-byes and well-wishes.  

Sarah, Christy, Mike, Adam, and Brutus.

The rest of trip didn't go without incident.  In Brian's Brian-ary fashion, he typed up road-trip itineraries for the drive.  Notice I made that word plural.  Yep, he had three itineraries typed up, one for each vehicle in the caravan, all bounded in spiral coverings.  

Our next scheduled stop, after Buc-ees, was a restaurant in Wichita Falls.  It was supposed to be the best restaurant around for miles.  We were to eat there for lunch.  We were already an hour behind schedule because we had a late start getting out the door.  Sarah and I followed behind the Adam and Brian, making turn after turn after turn to get to this restaurant.  After about thirty minutes of maneuvering down side streets in Wichita Falls we come to a bridge that the U-haul truck can't clear!  Up to this point, Sarah and I hadn't really been paying attention as we were following along, mostly because we were busy jabbering; but it turned out that the direct route was closed due to high water.  That's what caused us to take one detour after another, only to end up at a dead end.  Needless to say we threw the itinerary out the window (figuratively speaking of course.)  We ended up eating Wendy's instead.  

Once we hit Amarillo, Brian was getting a bit low on gas.  We were on a freeway going through the city and planned to stop as soon as we got on the other side of town.  Bad move!  After Amarillo there was nothing.  NOTHING!!!!  Not even phone service!  No houses, no towns, nothing but miles and miles of nothing.  

I was getting very very antsy because I knew that Brian would run out of gas soon.  I couldn't pull up Google maps on my phone to see when we'd get to the next town.  I couldn't call Brian to check to see how the gas gauge was doing.  I knew in Amarillo he had about 70 miles until empty, but in my mind that would go a lot faster because of him towing the trailer.  

Maybe I had too much caffeine on the trip, was this was seriously stressing me out.  In my mind, this is how it was going to play out: 

Brian would run out of gas and we'd have to leave him behind to drive 100 miles to the next gas station.  We'd come back hours later, in the middle of the night, to a vandalized U-haul and a missing Brian.  (Obviously I've seen too many scary movies like Children of the Corn and These Hills Have Eyes.)  

I finally got a very weak signal on my phone and was able to pull up GPS for the next gas station.  It was 12 miles away.  We'd already gone about 50 miles.  I was praying, Lord please help us get there!  

Well, we got there alright.  Except it was in one of those towns that you'd miss if you blinked.  And the gas station, with one ratty gas pump, was closed!  The next town was another 15 miles! 

Well, guess what, we MADE it!  Whew!  With like two miles of gas to spare.   

Not much longer after that we started to see dark clouds.  

Out in the distance the clouds were taking on a greenish/yellowish hue.  Tornado for sure.  Then we saw this.

Storm chaser cars.  We passed about five of these cars.  They werestopped along the highway ready to see some action.   Obviously not a good sign.

Not too long afterward we hit a horrible storm.  It was a flash flood and everyone on the road had to pull over.  

If water on road, turn around, don't drown.  Thanks for the words of wisdom.

It only took a few minutes for the road to look like this.  Scary stuff.

We planned to stop at a hotel in Trinidad, Colorado late that night.  After fifteen hours of traveling we were all very tired.  Adam and Brian had to drive the moving trucks through the winding, steep mountains at nighttime in order to get there.   They were both stressed, but they did it!  We made it to the hotel that night and only three hours left to drive the next morning!

We finally made it to beautiful Parker, Colorado!