Two Handed Driving To Albuquerque!!

As we left Tucumcari, it was a gorgeous morning, but just after navigating a jam-packed Flying J for fuel, the winds came up.  By the way ... the Flying J in Tucumcari only has biodiesel.  I barely had 40 gallons of fuel in the tank and it took 60 to fill it up.  I guess I'll find out if I can run with it soon enough.  So far I haven't been able to confirm that I can use it with my engine.  I'm definitely not happy about it ... after all, wasn't it to be more economical??  The price was the same as regular diesel across the street, but I hear you get worse mileage.  How's that better??  Like Tom, the other thing I don't understand is how they can say it has 5-20% biofuel or vegetable and animal oils.  5% I could live with.  The other thing to note is that manufacturers are not covering any damage to your vehicle caused by using this stuff.  I guess I'll throw away that Flying J credit card I just got.  

Anyway, the further we went, the worse the wind got.  My 11 mpg made a sharp dip down to 8.  Maybe it was the fuel???

We skirted around some black clouds with nary a drop of water and headed for the dark skies over the hill.

This is the first time I've seen a long freight train in the last month!!  

Hmmm those clouds are getting thicker ... and darker ... with wind that is just terrible.  I didn't buy enough "stuff" on this trip ... my rig is pretty light and I'm all over the road the entire way.  The big trucks don't help.  They just can't seem to stay on THEIR side of the white line!!

By now we can actually see the rain coming down in sheets ... it looks like fog it's so thick in some areas.  Still the winds are beating me up!!  I was hoping that at some point they would let up.  I checked the weather on my phone since my Weather Alert radio kept going off, but thankfully it was for Tucumcari ... and we were coming in to Albuquerque.

Finally just over the hill and down into the Albuquerque Valley, the wind quit.  We got a few spots on our windshields, but not enough to even turn the wipers on.  The road just seemed to turn at the right time as we slipped around the big black clouds.  This one was huge and had just dumped rain and hail on the Balloon Fiesta grounds.  It was raining so hard the entire cloud went straight to the ground!!

Thanks to Tom and Barbara's expert navigating, we drove right to the check-in point with hardly any traffic at all ... well except for that red light I had to run!!  There was no one in line, we just drove right up and checked in!!  We were the first of the Boomers to arrive, as Cool Judy and Luke Rinehimer were all set up to welcome us!!  

This is the view of the balloon landing field out my front window ... along with the rest of the clouds we missed yesterday!!  This will be my first experience dry camping for an extended period of time, so we'll see how THAT goes!!  I'm trying to use as little electrical as possible to keep from running my generator due to the fridge.  

There's nothing on the schedule until Thursday, so it's SHOPPING for me ... a yarn store, a quilt store, a western wear store, an antique store ............ you know, just because I need the added weight for the rig!