As we got everything in our tents someone came by to tell us that there was a Tornado Warning - where do we go? The campground had a stone house with a basement - we should go there. I looked at Bill who then said to me "I'll be fine". Yeah - like I'm going to leave him in the camp when a tornado is raging through. We had a few words and exchanged eye contact... meanwhile, Aubri and I decide to walk up to the gate to see out across the fields at the storm. There is this beautiful tourquois color in the sky but no rotation. We stand there watching the sky for a while with some other folks when I start to see the updrafts. Then I see the rotation. Then Aubri points out the rain. A wall of water is headed our way!
We run to the stone house and get in the basement just as the rain hits. It rains hard for about 15 minutes. I wasn't worried about Bill at this point as the wind is not strong enough for a tornado. When we come back out of the basement, I can see our camp and everything looks fine. But once we get there - Bill has been sitting in the truck during the storm so no one was inside the camp to make sure the rain didn't pool in the tarps.... and pool it did! We had so much rain in such a short period of time that it had pulled the back side of the EZ-ups down. We lost one entire EZ-up and broke two more (brand new ones). We had to cut one tarp to drain the water. Everything got wet!
I was devastated! I have been camping for so long with never a drop of rain inside of a tent before... and now everything is soaked! We ended up going back into town to dry our clothes and stay in warm dry beds one more night. I returned the next day to fix our tents and replace the broken EZ-up and stayed our entire time this year. But... I decided that I was done with tent camping now.
Here is our set up this year:
Our camp from the road
Our back door
Our kitchen
Another view of our kitchen
Our common space
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