A Facebook friend's photograph today of the flat approach to Amarillo, Texas brought back childhood memories for me.

During my family's time in New Mexico (1950-1954 in Hobbs, 1954-1960 in Roswell), we would take annual trips to visit relatives in Oklahoma.  My father found driving at night more comfortable because it was cooler and because he could see the lights of cars approaching on dead-straight roads from far away.  We would therefore leave our New Mexico home late in the afternoon and drive to approximately Wichita Falls, where we would stay at a motel. Driving northeastward across the Llano Estacado (the 37,000 sq mi mesa that straddles the border of NM and TX), we would approach Amarillo at night time. The flat top of the Llano Estacado—slightly descending toward Amarillo—made the lights of Amarillo visible for a very long time during our approach.  Its lights seemed to float above the black horizon, spreading horizontally as we got closer.