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Camping in the rain
We started out with high hopes. We packed our brand new, six-man tent in the back of the van and surrounded it with sleeping bags, air mattresses, and pillows.
We added our favorite camping food, everything from breakfast burritos to marshmallows and chocolate bars for a late-night cookout. We had a red-checkered table cloth, our handy hatchet, and a kerosene lantern. We were traveling in style.
If only we‚d thought to consult the forecast, we might have been traveling to a different location as well. But the season‚s first camping trip was at hand; we didn't‚t consider that the forces of nature might have other plans.
We traveled the three hours to our destination on Friday afternoon. We sang songs and played trivia games, our favorite driving pastimes. A few clouds loomed on the western horizon, but we paid them no mind.
Even a sudden shower failed to alert us to the bank of thunderheads that was moving into the area. We hit sunshine on the other side and wrote it off as one of those "scattered showers" that meteorologists talk about.
Once we reached our lakeside camping spot, our friends arrived to meet us. We settled into adjacent spaces and set up tables, chairs, and a community clothesline. Then we started a fire.
The kids waded and chased minnows. The adults visited and cooked dinner, happy to enjoy the great outdoors together. None of us imagined just how "great" those outdoors would be in a few short hours.
We hit our sleeping bags around 10 p.m. Our friends were snug in their motor home; we were happily nestled into our spacious tent, on its inaugural outing in the wild.
About midnight, the thunder started. Showers pelted our sturdy tent. They became steadily heavier, until the heavens finally parted and a record-breaking eight inches of rain fell on our humble campsite in just eight hours‚ time.
We had never experienced such a downpour, even in the tropics. The wind howled. The tent walls billowed one way, then another. Along the seams, wherever the stitching came together, small rivers of water found a way into our temporary home.
By morning, we were cold, wet, exhausted, and unnerved by the steady pummeling of the elements. Not wanting to awaken our friends, we greeted the soggy sunrise by crawling into our van and starting the motor, hoping to warm up.
When our friends emerged from their motor home, apologetic that their generator had kept them from hearing the storm, we all took one look at the clouds and decided to postpone camping until another weekend.
Working through the steady rain, we dismantled the tent and undid all the careful nesting we had done the night before. Before we finished, we were doubled over laughing at the knee-deep mud and everybody‚s plastered-down hair.
We drove to the nearest town and devoured a mammoth breakfast of pancakes, fried eggs and hash-browns, along with several pots of hot coffee.
Then we drove to our friends‚ house and spent the rest of the weekend drying out the tent. It wasn't‚t the roughing-it experience we had planned for, but we did see some good movies. We also managed to eat at most of our favorite restaurants.
We consult the forecast now, before we go camping. We also leave the tent at home, opting for something with a harder roof instead. But we think back fondly on the days when camping meant sleeping on the ground. And we still laugh about the weekend that it should have meant packing the oars, too.