Not too many things are certain in life, but over the years, we have come to count on this one thing: if we go camping, it is going to rain! We can go camping in the middle of a drought, and somehow we always seem to manage to have a big rainstorm. Those who attended the International Rally in Dayton in 1999 know what I mean. It was a dry summer, and here in Pennsylvania we were under a drought emergency situation, but when we got to Dayton, the rain poured down. In fact, it rained so hard that the parking spot we parked in at Dayton flooded and we had to move! This is nothing new for us. We've had to evacuate from campgrounds due to flooding. In fact, we've grown to expect it and it just wouldn't be the same if we didn't have a rip-roaring thunderstorm some time during a week of camping.
We've had some memorable storms too. We went down to the shore one year and a terrible storm blew in one night. We noticed several campers gave up in the middle of the night and were not there in the morning. I guess they were just not seasoned rain campers like us! On another trip, we had just stopped into the ranger station before we set up camp. I heard the ranger tell someone that there was a zero percent chance of rain. Later that evening, a big thunderstorm hit us as we watched the fireflies twinkle in the field behind us. First there were little flashing bugs ...then BIG flashing clouds!
In the summer of 1998, we traveled across the Great Plains. You could see for miles and miles. There was only one black cloud on the horizon. We joked that the black cloud was probably over the campground we were staying at. Sure enough, it was! No sooner had we arrived at the park, than the skies opened up in a deluge of Biblical proportions. Unfortunately, that also seemed to trigger a Biblical style plague: a hatch of mosquitoes like I've never seen before. There were thousands and thousands of mosquitoes. The window screen was loaded with mosquitoes trying the get into the trailer. In order to go anywhere outside you had to run! My sister found that the best way to keep many of them off was to do the "chicken dance" whereever you went! Too bad we didn't bring a Chicken Dance tape or CD!
One night at Clear Creek State Park here in Western Pennsylvania, the weather bureau forecast possible tornadoes. The ranger came around to warn us. I had put up a tarp to keep the picnic table dry the day before. I had used an elastic cord and a tent stake to tie one end of the tarp to the ground. The thunderstorms that night dumped so much water that the tent stake pulled out of the wet ground. The elastic cord flung that tent stake up into the side of the Airstream with a big bang! Becky thought the tornado had hit us!
Another time at Clear Creek Park, we had thunderstorm after thunderstorm roll through all night long. When we got up in the morning, the river had come up 8 feet and was starting to flood the campground. I didn't see it, but I suppose the park rangers were loading animals two by two into an ark somewhere in the park. The rangers soon came around to tell us we had to evacuate before we were trapped there. There was no argument about that request; I didn't think the Airstream would make a very good boat. We left as picnic tables were floating off down the river. The flood did a lot of damage to the park.
Several years ago, I made the mistake of using a pop-up camper on one of our camping trips. We were at the Outer Banks of North Carolina. When we were arriving near Nag's Head, we turned on the radio, which said that the earliest hurricane in 27 years had just hit Florida. It came up over the southeastern states and went back out to the ocean ...right over the top of us at Oregon Inlet, of course! It was not a hurricane any more, but it had 35 mile per hour winds and lots of rain. The pop-up shook and rattled all night long. It sounded as though the canvas was going to rip off any second. The wing bed with two children attempting to sleep on it was moving up and down at least two to four inches as the wind gusted. The rain battered down on the flat aluminum roof. On top of that, the roof started to leak. None of us got any sleep that night. The pop-up is good in sheltered locations but it's lousy out in the open during a storm! I had decided to take this pop-up camper instead of the Airstream, because pop-ups are so much easier to tow and cheaper to pull. I was really sorry I didn't bring the Airstream, and believe me, I never want to go camping on the shore again without the Airstream.
We had a worse storm when we were at Assateague Island a couple of years before that. The campground at Assateague was almost identical to the campground at Oregon Inlet. Both were out in the open right next to the shore. You could hear the ocean but you couldn't see it because of the sand dunes. When we were at Assateague, we had the Airstream. We heard the wind and rain battering the Airstream that night. We looked out and said, "My it's nasty out there!" and then we went to bed and had a good night's sleep
One summer we went to Raystown Lake. Raystown Lake is in about the middle of southern Pennsylvania. It's got the clearest water I've ever seen in a man-made lake. The lake is 30 some miles long in a scenic, hilly valley. Seven Points Marina is a great place to stay. If you have a boat, the lake is great for water skiing or fishing. There are 52 pound striped bass in the lake. ...We were enjoying our stay that week. Mike was out cooking our salmon steaks over the campfire. Some clouds started to roll in from the west and it got cloudier and cloudier! Soon there was thunder in the distance. Mike put more wood on the fire to speed things up. The thunder continued to get louder, and more frequent. It soon became apparent that this was going to be a bad storm. The sky grew blacker and blacker. Mike put a few more pieces of wood on the fire in an effort to speed things along. Just as the first drops of rain began to fall, and while streaks of lightning blasted through the trees, Mike came running in with dinner. My, what a storm it was! Branches and leaves flew in the wind. The frequent lightning was so close that you could not count between the flash and the BANG! The rain poured from the sky as if Niagara Falls had just moved to Pennsylvanina …and we were under it! Yet we sat there eating our delicious meal. Somebody had to reach over and close a window that was letting rain in, but we able to enjoy the salmon steaks which Mike had cooked to perfection. It was one of the best camping meals we've ever had …in one of the worst storms we've ever seen. We've gone through so many storms in the Airstream that it seems to be a normal event. It gives you a cozy feeling to be sitting there with the whole family, dry and snug. Later, we found out that the same thunderstorm that hit Raystown Lake, had killed a man in a campground just west of where we were. A tree had blown over onto his tent and hit him. That was one violent storm. I was glad I was in my Airstream!
If you have our luck with rain, an Airstream is a good choice in camping equipment! We've used tents and pop-ups and a motor home, but they've never stayed dry in the kind of rains we experience. There's nothing like a wet sleeping bag to dampen a camping trip. Our Airstream doesn't leak; no leaky roof vents or windows to dampen our beds or our spirits while we are camping. It's nice to be able to look out the window of the Airstream and say, "My, it's nasty out there. Glad I'm in here!"
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