8 02 10 Albequerque to La Junta, Colo. MAJOR storm

This isn't night darkness.  This is a storm.

We finished dinner at 7:20 and debated hanging it up for the day or driving another hour or so.  The sky was really dark and ominous except for one beautiful patch of blue.  We discussed what direction that patch of blue was and talked to some guy outside the restaurant, and we all came to the conclusion that the blue sky was East. So we headed out for our blue sky leaving the storm behind us----but then we realized that we were no longer heading for blue sky--we were heading straight for the storms.  Another half hour of driving and we were in the middle of the very ominous dark clouds and skies.  There was no blue sky anywhere, only storm clouds.  And I mean storm clouds.  Lightening EVERYWHERE--beside us, above us, behind us--everywhere.  And thunder, too.  And we were on a tiny road with no one else around.  Every once in a great while someone would come with their lights on from the other direction, but seeing another vehicle was a rare sight. We felt totally alone and so vulnerable.  It wasn't raining on us, but it was raining all around us, and I felt that if it did start to rain it could easily be a flash flood and wipe us out.

Sandra asked if I was scared and I was.  We could see on the GPS that we were over 20 miles from the next town and we didn't know how large the town would be or if it would even have hotels, but we couldn't wait to get there, no matter what size it was.  We began counting every mile on the GPS which is like a kid counting minutes--it just made the ride longer.  We felt like we were NEVER going to get there.  Sandra helped get our minds off the storm by trying to capture the lightening.  THAT'S hard, but she got a couple of shots. Luckily the rain held off.  At about mile 5 in our countdown it finally started to rain, but it didn't downpour.  We finally got to La Junta, in the SE corner of Colorado and breathed one of the biggest sighs of relief we have ever breathed. 

Even the people who worked in the hotel said the storm looked even more ominous than usual.
Unbelievably, the next morning it was blue skies everywhere.  We never even heard the storm during the night.  Don't even know if it made it to La Junta.  But that's the good news.