Out West and Storm Chasing with the Kids!

 We take a slow ride from Abilene to Amarillo Texas. I call it abandoned house searching.  ww did make a stop at CapRock Canyon too.  How beautiful it is here.   As we are exiting the park we get to see some Buffalo!   The cactus are in bloom too! It takes us quite while to go from Abilene to Amarillo.  But, that is ok, we have a lot of fun taking photos.   The next day we go from Amarillo to Denver. We drive straight though with one very cool stop at It looks like the Badlands  It is pretty warm out, we all enjoy the formations and walking around here.  Next stop Denver... we're going to the same hotel we started in. They have a salt water pool.  We can't wait!   We have dinner first...  so excited about the pool.  We get back and change.  I get this from Dan....  I thought he was joking.  He wasn't.  They are painting the deck. Not h

Heading South this morning. Leaving at 10AM.  We have a breafing. Things looking good today. We head out.   Our van still has the tumble weed in our grill  More cool clouds We are going after a super cell we drive around more looking for more structured clouds. No tornado today we go to the hotel.  Dan's suitcase is missing. 😱 We looked back at photos an saw it was packed in another van. Whew.  We order pizza, talk a bit then hit the hay. No more storms.  A slow ride back to Denver. Tomorrow night In Amarillo 

I get up early and head to breakfast. Daniel and Susannah are down there. Susannah tells me that she had a dream that she really saw a tornado, and I told her.  There is your Tornado Susannah!!!  We all gather at 11:15 to get on the road. Everything looks really good today. there is anticipation in the air. As we travel we see strange cloud structures. Caryn and Tara explain that the clouds are HCR's, which is a very good sign. Horizontal Convective Rolls, You need it to roll Horizontal before it will roll vertical.  We stopped down the road for lunch. We saw some other storm chasers. Cool Car We travel a little more, then we go get ice cream, they are waiting for the storms to begin, and we have time. and it is said that stopping at DQ is good luck?  We shall see.  We travel some more, heading into New Mexico where the storms are starting, then we head back to Texas. Winds are picking up, the storms are gathering strength . 

 Another Low key day. We meet down in the lobby at 11:30 to head out to eat. All the vans stop at where there are a bunch of restaurants. We head over to the tortilla factory and have a great lunch.  Texas sidewalk  Then we head over to Palo Duro Canyon State Park. We stop at a few look overs, then head to a cool place to hike where there was a waterfall. We can hike right up to the hole and go to the top to over look the canyon. After that the rest of the people head to dinner. Our group decides to go to a steak house. It was so good.  While there we all Google where to get cool pictures of sunsets in Amarillo. We head to a place that has a old windmill and a abandoned house. When we found it the house was gone, but the Windmill was still there. It was on a abandoned road too, so that was pretty neat.   A young man was driving down the road and saw the amazing sunset with the windmill and head up by us too.  We had nice conve

No good storms to chase today.  We just chill and have a slow start to the day.  Breakfast in Oklahoma  I take a walk before we leave. I find a Southern Magnolia tree. I just love Magnolias!  Head into Texas... not a super long drive. Susanna and I switched seats in the Van.  📷 Tara Leigh Whichello We get to our next hotel. Going to stay here two nights! Woot! That will be nice.  We have dinner at Cracker Barrel. The boys get to talk to Roger Hill during dinner. He explained his methods to them. Which makes them very excited about the rest if the trip.  After dinner we head to Cadillac Ranch. It's cool. All of us taking different photos. There are a bunch of spray paint cans there for us to paint with.                Ohhhh, Susanna!  📷 Tara Leigh Whichello            Our crazy group!  It's getting darker, we seem to all gather around Adam.. He's at the first car, writing Fuck Cancer...  📷 Tara Le

We wake up super early, load the van and are moving by 7 AM. Getting out before the snow starts falling in Denver.  It's a long day. We have fun getting to know each other during the long drive.  Here are some Gravity Waves we see not far from Denver. It goes on for Miles.  Limiting our liquid intake.  We stop for lunch at a ❤️ 's. Eat in the Van as we travel on down the road.  We drive through Amarillo heading east. We are pounding the pavement to get to an area that something may Bubble up. We get to stop and take some photos of an old abandoned house.   We travel on. Looking for something to happen,  nothing does....  All the elements are there. Mother Nature is Mother Nature.  One cell was promising,  but smoke from the New Mexico fires covered up the cloud structure.  I could only imagine how beautiful it would be as the sun was setting.  The smoke was hiding the beauty from us.                   darn smoke.... We head to the