No Rain Dance Needed

Boy aint it true that no matter what I do...it never fails to bring the rain. No rain in 5 months it seems.... not a good enough rain to count that is. As most will do the rain dance, but I've got 2 left feet. So instead I schedule a camp trip 'cause the weatherman is calling for wonderful weather ahead! Little known, he left that rain forecast out of the news that night. I've never been much for the news nowadays, so the weather app must be enough.

Well you see, Oklahoma weather is always changing. If you don't like it, wait 5 minutes and it will change. Hindsight is 20-20 and the weather app is still showing mid 80's for a high and once again no rain in the mix. It may be beautiful for once....lets do it! We pack up for the weekend- excited to see our friends we haven't seen in a couple months. Friday night was well- but no riding due to late arrival after work.

Saturday started muggy. We take a look at our phones to see its supposed to be 90 and feel like 100. YUCK! It's too hot to ride our chubby out of shape horses in this heat... that's not fair to ask them of such work with no prepare. We let them chill in the stall and snack on some hay instead. To our surprise, my friend brought a bunch of water balloons for the kids, but i feel us adults had more fun with it than they did. It was a great way to kill off the heat of the day.

Later that evening, we contemplated on going riding or not- maybe holding off until closer to dark will be a good time to go ride. Instead the sun beats around the clouds and brings out the humidity. Later a light rain shower shows up from the storms around us. We continue out our evening with no thought about it. We decided to wait till morning to ride. To just get up early and ride and have a late breakfast when we got back. Oh but the Oklahoma weather had other plans.

See neither of us have a true living quarters for our rigs- so we have a bunch of stuff strung out to make our camp trip happen. The sun sets, we drive over to cove 3 to take showers because the showers in our cove are in sad shape and due for a much needed repair. We come back to a birthday celebration for one of the kiddos- eat some cake and chit-chat until bedtime. Thunder and Lightning is off in the distance. No worries to thought because the storms are off to the East and running south- they will miss us.

The winds shift and pushes the storm to us. Radar is showing it will still miss us by a mile or 2 as the crow flies. Few minutes later- phones start going off sending out a weather alert for strong straight line winds, baseball sized hail and thunderstorm-45 min out they say. We don't take that lightly as our horses have nowhere to go. The kiddos were sleeping in the tent for the weekend and so they had nowhere to sleep and lord only knew how long this storm would last or if the tent alone would survive the winds.

It was already 10:30pm when we got the notice and 15 min after the notice- we managed to get camp packed up between the all of us and get horses loaded just in the nick of time before the hail hit. Boy wasn't that a fast "45 minutes"... You can hear the pings and dings as the the hail hit the truck- its pouring buckets of rain as it also blows in sideways limiting our view to basically the hood of the truck.

The roads out of camp are twisty at the start then they straighten out. As we hit the main road out to the highway- it's dark and narrow as well. The highway is a full construction zone- bright lights from other cars inhibit the sight of the road. We reach the Sinclair gas station and rest under the pavilion until the rain lightens up some. The regular 25 min drive to home turns into 45 minutes due to the lack of sight and flooding causing the trailer to drag. I've got my babies in the back- no way am I driving faster than 30 mph in this mess.

I later realized that the lights never got plugged back up to the truck for the trailer- I had my hazards on for the truck but thankful the good Lord was watching over us between camp and town because my trailer was unseen to the naked eye in the blinding rain. We stop to plug in the lights- the rain has stopped and we are back to rolling at normal speeds. We make it home safely at around midnight. The horses were very much ready to get out of the trailer and to be home in their pasture to stretch their legs.

No rain dance is ever needed for me- I just have to go camping and it wouldn't be a camp trip if something psycho didn't happen along the way! But hey, it makes for a great story right?!

Happy Trails 🐴⛈💨🧭