I haven't written about this because...well, mostly because it's kind of embarrassing, at least the first story is. But my mom advised me to write my two recent camping experiences down so that I don't forget them. She's right. So here they are. Kind of long but what else would you expect from me?
So, the weekend. Had you ever heard of a derecho? I hadn't. Apparently
weather forecasters didn't see it coming. I didn't.
Within about 12 hours we went from this
to this
to this
--playing with glow sticks in the tub at home during the 2-day power outage. Pinterest to the rescue. Glow sticks are also helpful to place on the basement coffee table at night when children are afraid to sleep in the "pinch-black" basement which is the only cool place in the house.
We were lucky, by the way, only to lose it for 2 days. Some friends I talked to yesterday still didn't have power. Some still don't have it today. IT IS SO HOT not to have A/C today.
So, the story has a backstory. Remember how
we went camping in a tornado last month without Matt? ...okay, there were tornadoes
around us but we weren't actually
in one. But anyway. Basically we--meaning Hannah and I--completely ignored the weather report which called for "scattered T-storms" during the night, and we drove 3ish hours to Assateague Island. The afternoon was beautiful. As evening came on, we set up our tent in a drizzle, then I lay awake while our tent blew this way and that way, weighed down only by me and my sleeping children. It started raining just before dark and pretty much didn't stop pouring until about 4 a.m. I wanted to leave but by the time I decided that, it was too late. It was raining too hard and our car was too far away.
I had put a tarp under the tent, which I now know is a bad idea, because a half inch of water seeped into our tent. So the older kids, who were on the floor, got soaked. Lucky Lars was in the Pack'n'Play and slept through the whole thing. I think he was lulled to sleep, after a good half hour of heartily indignant crying, by the sound of the wind and rain. Anyway so the kids woke up wet sometime after midnight and got on the air mattress with me. Of course I was then soaked as well and we were all freezing. Dear Robbie went in the rain to the car, which was parked a 2-minute walk away, and brought us towels, and we slept until 5:30 a.m., at which point we ate a breakfast of "cold s'mores" and got the heck outta there. Lars slept almost the entire 5-hour drive home and the kids and I listened to
Ramona the Pest...twice. Ten days later I had finally finished unpacking and doing all the laundry--camping unpacking is no joke.
Also, if you forgot, Matt was in Brazil during this time, texting me pictures of Cristo Redentor and the romantic beaches of Rio.
The funny thing is I kind of felt like a child afraid of the dark that long night. Like someone needed to put glow sticks on the table next to
me, perhaps. I couldn't sleep, I was lonely, it was dark and cold, the wind was loud, the lightning was frequent, the tent was shaking a lot, and I felt like it would never end. Eventually it did. Robbie and Hannah helped a lot via text. How awesome is it that I could text them all night while I was shivering in my tent? It made it so much less lonely. Hannah even offered to come in my tent with me, although she wouldn't have fit on the mattress with Ida and Theo and me. But it was so good to have others there when I didn't have Matt.
Anyway, so we had a chance to make up for the Assateague debacle by going camping with friends (and Matt this time) in the mountains near Roanoke. We left at 8 p.m. on Thursday, rolled into the site at 11ish, slept OK in our new big tent, then spent the entirety of the hot, sweaty Friday at the lake. It was awesome. 100 degrees of awesome.
After dinner, Lars treated us to another half an hour of indignant crying in the Pack'n'Play--not that I blame him because it was seriously so hot. But it was about 8 p.m., he normally goes to bed at 6:30 and had missed both of his naps. I had tried holding him, rocking him, walking him, but he cried no matter what, so I stripped him to his diaper and put him in the Pack'n'Play, knowing that at least in there he could fall asleep eventually. Matt took the kids for a walk and our friends Jason and Mackie and their older kids stayed at the site with me eating s'mores.
Lars was finally quiet and we took a little walk ourselves in the other direction, to look at fireflies in the dusk. The lakeside campground had 13 sites, almost all occupied, close together and wooded. We hadn't gotten far when we passed a man at another site who looked up at the sky above the woods west of us and said, "That is looking pretty dark." I looked up and saw dark gray clouds moving toward us but wasn't worried--just a little annoyed and wondering where the rain fly to my tent was. Then the trees started rustling in a seriously spooky way and the wind picked up fast and loud. It sounded like thunder but worse, and trees started falling nearby. People ran to their cars and I turned around and booked it toward my tent and my baby. I pulled a sleepy diapered Lars from his crib and jumped in my car...looked around...no car keys. Matt was nowhere to be seen and it was way too scary outside for me to be walking around with a baby. Lars climbed all over me as I sat in the driver's seat, tried not to hyperventilate, and prayed about 50 times in a row for Matt and the kids' safe return.
Jason and Mackie had booked it to their own tent, grabbed their own sleeping baby, and piled into their own car. When I saw them drive up, I joined them and asked if they had seen Matt. Jason to the rescue hopped on his bike and went to look for them in the storm. It seemed like forever but was probably only about 5 minutes before he came back and told me he'd found them.
Matt got the kids into the car and shoved as much stuff from our site into our car as he could. We caravaned toward the exit, but the road out was blocked by fallen trees. We drove back to a semi-clear spot and waited out the rain, watching the long line of stopped cars on the road across the lake and waiting for about an hour until crews arrived and slowly cleared the trees. The storm had hit at about 8:30 and we left at 11 p.m. We had planned to spend another night but I was way too spooked and everything in our tent was soaked anyway--I had left the rain fly off because of the heat, planning to put it on if it started raining, not thinking that a storm would come up severe enough that our first thought would be to our safety and not our stuff.
And that was that. The first time we camped, I was so mad at myself for going despite the weather report. I didn't really think anything could happen to us, but I was afraid anyway. It was such a long night and it was completely my fault for being there. The second time, I think we probably couldn't have predicted the storm since the weather forecasters couldn't either, but my neighbor pointed out later that such prolonged hot and humid weather had to break at some point and that could have been a warning sign.
I was truly afraid that something could happen to Matt and the kids, who were out in the open and surrounded by trees, and he had been afraid for Lars and me as well. But it all worked out fine and we were all safe. In the confusion I lost my wedding ring and it was missing until the next afternoon, but I didn't even really care because we were all together. Now that we're all unpacked, I'm missing my bathing suit and Lars and Theo's suits which is sort of annoying, but they're not wedding rings and they're certainly not people so they don't matter either. Every time I have been annoyed thinking about the lost suits I remember the ring and then remember how afraid I had been, alone with Lars in the car. It's all just stuff. Even a wedding ring is just stuff. I have loved Matt for a very long time but I don't know if I ever loved him as much as I did when I saw him coming back from his walk with the kids in the storm.
So there's my very long story, or two stories. We made it out of the mountains eventually, driving around dozens of fallen trees and barely keeping awake with lots of junk food and soda on the long drive home. We didn't know the same storm had hit our town and surrounding towns and that we had such interesting and hot days ahead of us. We pulled in at 3 a.m. Saturday to a quiet and very dark neighborhood. A large branch which had broken and flown over from a tree fifty feet away covered our front lawn. We have a brand-new tent but I don't think we will be using it for a while. Would the third time be the charm, or do bad things happen in threes? I'm really not curious enough to find out.
