Oh wow, last night we had a 10-hour thunder and lightening storm. It started around 9.30 last night, I could hear the thunder rumbling in the distance continuously and then the lightening started. It was amazing to watch, just constant flashes across the sky. It wasn’t like the lightening I’m used to seeing with the forks flashing every few minutes, this was the whole sky lighting up every few seconds like someone turning a light on and off, and the thunder never stopped. It was really eerie and a little scary but awesome to watch. It went on for about 2 hours and then the rain came with a vengeance. It poured down and although rain always sounds loud inside the trailer, this time it was as bad as it sounded. Along with the rain came the wind and since we hadn’t rolled up the awning on the trailer before the storm started, at 12.30 a.m., in the wind and rain, in our Pj’s Mike and I were outside putting away the awning before it got blown away. We managed it without too much effort only to find that while the door was open a hundred skeeters had decided to join us for the night; I think this upset mike more than being out in the storm at half past midnight. We spent the next half hour swatting and squishing the bloody things, and I spent another half hour this morning wiping their (?) blood off the ceiling.
As the thunder and lightening, and the rain was still going this morning we didn’t rush to get up since very little sleep had been had. We finally got sorted out in between showers and the hitching up went without a hitch. We set off about 11, later than usual since we were headed the same way as the storm was travelling we wanted to give it as much of a head start as possible. There wasn’t too much damage at the campground, just a little flooding and some partially drowned trees. We drove to Hinckley in eastern Minnesota today, via Crosby. Crosby is a cute town on a lake (surprise surprise, this is Minnesota after all) where Mike used to go with his parents when he was a little boy. He couldn’t remember where exactly on the lake they stayed when they came here, but I’m just amazed he remembers coming here at all, it was a long, long time ago!
We drove around another huge lake, Mille Lacs Lake, it was massive and really choppy, it looked more like the ocean than a lake.
We got to Hinckley late this afternoon to another lovely resort. It’s over 600 acres with maybe 150 RV sites on it, most of which are permanent. The site has everything including a golf course and it’s own river and our site is very private and secluded. We got all set up and then while we were searching for internet access at the lodge the tornado alarm started going off. The sky had been clear and blue but by this time it was dark grey and the rain had started. We headed back to the trailer as we’d left Tal-y there and in the few minutes that took us the area around the trailer was already starting to flood as the rain was coming down so hard. We got Tal-y and then drove to the pool area where we had been informed everyone gathered while the siren was sounding. We got to spend about half an hour there soaked through to our undies but fortunately there was no tornado here; there were three of them that touched down a little ways south of us and did some damage but caused no injuries. After the siren stopped and the rain stopped the sky cleared and the sun came out. Except for the water that we had to slosh through it was like the storm never happened. It was a little scary and very surreal just waiting.