Nathan and I LOVE to go camping. If it were up to me, I'd head for the hills every single weekend. My love of camping started when I was little. The summer after my sophomore year of college I spent 10 weeks as a counselor at a Girl Scout Camp where I slept under the stars (rain or shine!). I love being outside in the woods, taking hikes during the day, sitting around a campfire, cooking over a camp stove, and stargazing at night. When I met Nathan and learned he was an Eagle Scout who also loved to camp (and has many more outdoor survival skills than I ever will) I could not wait to take off with him for a weekend camping trip. Being past their camping days, my mom sent me all of our old family camping gear when I graduated from college and moved into my own house. In the fall of 2005, Nathan and I went on our first camping trip to a campground outside of Sandpoint, ID. I think that's when the tradition started... RAIN, RAIN, RAIN! It's a joke now that when we go camping, even if the forecast says it will be clear, there will be rain at some point over the weekend. Let me take you on a walk through our rainy camping adventures:
September 2005: Our first camping trip together & Taylor's first camping trip at 16 weeks old. It rained for 3 days straight and everything was a big mud pit (which Taylor thought was awesome!). It was my first experience with hanging a tarp from the trees to keep us dry (no tent is waterproof no matter what the manufacturers claim!). Luckily Nathan is an expert at all those Boy Scout knots so the tarp was hung in no time. We had an awesome site that you had to hike down a hill to access. The only downside... the rain water ran down the hill and right under our tent.
August 2007: I unfortunately do not have any pictures of our campsite, but for our 1st anniversary we went camping in MA. We arrived at the campsite as the thunder was rolling in the distance. In a mad panic we assembled the tent and as we started to hang our trusty tarp the thunder became louder and the rain began to fall. By the time the tarp was fully hung it was pouring. We spent the rest of the night holed up in the tent with Taylor. The rest of the weekend was gorgeous and we spent all day Saturday hiking the Friends Trail. Even though the weather was gorgeous, Taylor did all he could to get as dirty as possible.
September 2007: I found Otter River State Park online and it got such great reviews I wanted to go check it out. This time we forgot to check the weather forecast, although I'm not sure the forecast could have predicted what we experienced. All day Saturday was horribly hot and humid - the perfect set-up for a massive thunderstorm. Around 3pm the thunder began rolling in the distance and the wind picked up. We hadn't bothered to hang a tarp over our tent this time as we were not expecting rain. When the rain began to fall we headed into the tent. All of a sudden the thunder and lightening became so intense the flashes were blinding and we had to yell to hear each other over the roar. The winds became so strong Nathan had to hold the top of the tent steady. Tree branches began to fall all around us. One hit the top of the tent and ripped a hole in our rain cover. At that moment we opened the window to the front door to see the branches and twigs flying past, but instead about 30 feet in front of the tent we watched a large tree snap in half. It was at that point we decided our camping trip was over and it was time to pack up and get out, especially since the hole in the tent roof left a puddle inside the tent. Just as we finished packing up the campsite, the rain and winds subsided. It was at that point we realized the road out of the campground was blocked by tree. We also saw that our neighbors were trapped in their car between 4 huge tree trunks, 2 that fell behind them, 2 that fell directly in front of the car. The next campsite down was not as lucky. A large tree fell through the middle of the campsite, hitting their tent and smashing the hood of their car. I believe a lady in the tent broke her leg when the tree landed on her. They couldn't go anywhere since the tree was on their car and it took 10-15 min. for the paramedics to make it into the campground as there were power lines down across the campground entrance. Since we weren't headed anywhere fast, we took a walk around the campground to survey the damage. The firemen believe it was a small tornado that took out the trees as all the trees that fell were in a straight line starting at our campsite going through the two sites next to us, then it jumped over the lake and the destruction continued on the other side. We were very glad to have made it home in one piece. Taylor was such a trooper through the whole thing and was as calm as we could hope through the entire storm.
Two sites away:
July 2009: The past weekend Nathan and I, along with our friends Dan & Sherry and Anna, went camping in CT. We did check the forecast and it said to expect showers from 1am-8am with 1/4" of rain accumulation. We've survived more than a 1/4" of rain (obviously!), except we still have that hole in the top of our tent from the above camping trip, so to be on the safe side we decided to once again pull out our trusty tarp. At 11pm the thunder starting. Within 10 minutes the rain was falling in sheets. The water running off the tarp could have been mistaken for a waterfall. We went to bed listening to the rain, thunder and flashes of lightening. Around 1am the rain fell so hard it sounded like constant thunder. That's also the time we heard the tarp hit the top of the tent and slide off to the side. Even though the tarp was tilted to allow run-off, the amount of rain falling was too heavy for the twine holding up the tarp and it snapped. Our tent began leaking through the window seams so we just pulled our bed away from the side and went back to sleep. Not much else you can do at 1am! We woke up at 8am and got out of the tent to survey the damage. Everything that was carefully placed under the tarp was now soaking wet. Anna lucked out in that when the tarp came down it landed directly on top of her tent. She stayed nice and dry and slept wonderfully through the night. Dan and Sherry would have stayed a little more dry had their air mattress not sprung a leak and left them laying on the wet tent floor. Lucky for us, the rest of the weekend was dry (well, as dry as can be with the high humidity!) and we all slept wonderfully on Saturday night.
I would say we got 2" of rain over the course of the night. These chairs only began collecting water after the tarp fell.
So... anyone want to go camping??? We know how to have a great time!
1 comments:
We are going camping this weekend. (It is our first time together.) I hope that we don't have any experiences like yours, or Ian might never go again.
P.S. I love reading your blog.
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