Night Cross Country

Took off for my night Cross Country tonight. My niece decided to tag along for the flight, she is twelve years old and hadn't had the chance to go up in a GA aircraft. We departed Lubbck about 7:00 p.m. and headed north to Amarillo (93NM). Decided to climb on up to 7,500 heading out and had a very smooth flight. We had three other small airports on the route and I had marked them as checkpoints. My instructor is looking at the nav logs and is asking why I labeled the airports along the way. I just told him, "I'll activate the lights and use them for checkpoints." "Hmmm what if the lights don't work?" "Look for the next checkpoint" "OK fair enough" Off we go. I had to ask my niece if she was still alive. Never heard a peep out of her unless I asked. She was just sitting there enjoying the scenery. Landed at Amarillo. (Not really hard runway 22 is 13500 X 200) Headed back to Lubbock at 8,500 We were just outside of Amarillo and only at about 4,500 feet when my instructor asked me "While we are over this rough, rugged, canyon terrain, what would you do if you lost your engine right now?" I told him I'd run procedures, try to find somewhere to land and if I ended up descending into the canyon, I turn the landing light on to see if I could see anything. If I didn't like what I saw, I'd just turn the light back off, and unplug my headset so I couldn't hear the passengers screaming. We made it back to Lubbock with very few bumps at all. Had a good flight and got to take a tag a long with me. All in all, a good flight.