Back from Colorado - part 1

We had a fun time in Colorado. Like one of my neighbors said, "When you take the kids its a trip. When you leave them at home it's a vacation." Well, we had a good trip. My wife and I have a vacation planned for later this year!

I'll say that as for cross-country trips though, the part from Houston to Pueblo was probably the least fun of any I've done yet. It started out pretty good with us leaving Houston early and beating the weather. We had one tiny cell that we went around near Waco on the way to our first stop in Amarillo, TX. But once we started flying over the hills closer to Amarillo, it felt like we got on a roller coaster. At 9000 and later 11,000 feet we had up drafts that would pick us up 200 feet before I could get the ascent stopped. The kids were sleeping at this time, but I was still trying to be gentle and avoid the hill-topping rollercoaster feeling coming back down to our altitude. Keep reading, it gets better... We finally started down to our landing in Amarillo. I'll get to the point and say that as we got close to 6000msl, it started getting really rough. We were bumping around and I was keeping busy just maintaining some semblance of control : ) Well, about 4 miles from the airport, bouncing around 200 feet at a time, the up and downs were too much and both boys who were awake at this point got sick. Yep, that kind of sick. So, my wife kept busy trying to keep them calm while I SOMEHOW managed to get us on the ground. Oh, did I mention that winds were 26 gusting to 35 and of course not right down the runway? Oh, and that a 737 landed a couple of minutes in front of us, so that didn't help too much on the stability near the runway!

After all that, we finally got it on the ground and got the plane parked. If you are a fellow Southwest Flying Club member, rest assured that the kids car seats caught all the "overflow". We changed the kids clothes, cleaned out their car seats, and then I drove into town to get some motion sickness medicine for the boys while they found something for lunch. Sounds appetizing doesn't it?

Because of fronts moving through the area, we ended up being stuck in Amarillo for a couple of extra hours while we waited for a break so we could get to Pueblo. More on that leg and our encounter with a "gust front" in part 2....