Day Nine - Durango, CO to Amarillo, TX
I got up and going by 9 AM and was aware that I was still quite far west and I needed to start moving east if I was going to make it to Memphis on time for my regional meeting that my company was holding. I headed south through the Southern Ute Indian reservation on Route 172. I passed into New Mexico, picked up route 64 and passed through Carson National forest and Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation.
Route 64 is a great road with lots of twists and turns and great scenery.
Notice the dark clouds in the background. I had to take my pictures fast as this storm chased me all the way to Santa Fe.
I stopped for lunch in Santa Fe. I really wished that I had more time to look around but I had a meeting to get to in Memphis so I kept going south and picked up Interstate 40. I headed east to Texas. The landscape really flattens out coming out of New Mexico and into Texas, lots of open grasslands and prairie. I was heading into the southern part of the great plains. I was in what turned out to be a 40 mile long construction site in Texas. What the construction crews had done was divert all of the traffic on to the west bound side of the highway making one lane in either direction. I had cement barriers on either side of me. So I had one lane to deal with, no breakdown lane and no room to pull over. This was fine in the beginning of the construction area. I had a semi truck behind me but he was no bother. To my right I could see an approaching rain storm. At first I did not give this a second thought, after all I had my rain gear on and there was no one in front of me. As the storm approached I started feeling the wind increase, it increased very rapidly. I strained to keep the bike going straight down the road, leaning the bike over into the wind as I road. As the wind increased further I started hearing pinging sounds in my helmet. I was catching rocks from the construction site on the other side of the highway that were being blown over and hitting me in the helmet and right arm and leg. I slowed and struggled to keep going straight as the wind would gust to at least 50 MPH. When the rain started the situation grew worse, rain came down in tropical force, lightning was all around and hit the prairie within eyesight and the not so friendly trucker behind me was a lot closer than I liked. This went on for 15 minutes or so until I finally broke out of the construction zone. The storm completely passed 20 minutes later. To my relief I came upon a rest area not long afterward. In was great to get off the bike and gather myself. This was most certainly the scariest event of the entire trip. After I collected myself, I continued to my hotel in Amarillo. I was glad to have the day done.
Day One - Marlborough MA to Ashtabula OH
Day Two - Ashtabula to Dexter, MN
Day Three - Dexter MN to Mount Rushmore, SD
Day Four - Mount Rushmore, SD to West Yellowstone, MT
Day Five - West Yellowstone, Mt to Logan, UT
Day Six - Logan, UT to Cedar City UT
Day Seven - Cedar City UT to Williams. AZ
Day Eight - Williams, AZ to Durango, CO
Day Nine - Durango, CO to Amarillo, TX
Day Ten - Amarillo, TX to Little Rock, AR
Day Eleven - Little Rock AR to Cordova TN
Day Twelve through Fifteen - Memphis, TN
Day Sixteen and Seventeen - the long ride home