Shopping trip

Today, we took the 2 hour drive to Ambato to get stocked up on groceries. We had a good time, and really enjoyed the time together as family. One of the most amazing things was driving over the lava flows from last weeks eruption from Tungurahua volcano. I had driven over them earlier this week in the bus on my way to Quito, so I was looking forward to sharing them with Becca. Simply stated, they are HUGE! There are 2 flows which made it down the mountain, and because of the enormous amount of aggregate material, the "highway department" simply filled in the cracks with dirt, and now everyone simply drives over the lava flows, since they cannot be removed from the road with any kind of speed. On our way back from Ambato, the volcano decided to peek it's head out of the clouds just a little bit, and we were able to get a pretty good view of the entire lava flow, and the affacted area. It was a wierd feeling driving over those HUGE lava flows, and imagining that just a week ago the now solid lava was flowing as though it was water.
From one end of the flow to the other is probably 2 miles. This picture does not fully show the scale and magnitude of the amount of "lava" and the affected area.