Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Monday, May 23, 2011 we're off to California, via Ohio



Today we all (except Lindsey) got up between 6 and 6:30 to finish putting things in the cars, and organizing what was to go in Lindsey’s car on the trailer. We dumped our tanks at the dump station, stopped by Speedco to swap out our fuel filter, went by U-Haul and hooked up the trailer, got the car tied down and packed, stopped by Dunkin Doughnuts and hit the road, all by 10am! All along we planned to leave Jackson by 10am, AND WE DID IT!

We had lunch on the road near Memphis and then drove on to Nashville. We planned on going to “The Aquarium” restaurant for dinner. We went there before and thought that Brett would enjoy it. I checked out the hours while en route and found out that not only that restaurant, but everything for blocks around the Opry House, was still closed from the floods in 2009!!! Wow, I can’t believe how much in this area was devastated during that disaster!

We checked into our KOA then headed to the Opry. When we got there, it was as if the Opry was now an island in the middle of an entire deserted outdoor mall and blocks of empty parking lots. It was late and it was starting to rain, so we decided we could check out more of Nashville in the morning and headed to dinner.

We were awoken at 4am by strobe like lightning coming through every window and vent. Have you ever seen the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”? It was just like when the little boy was awoken by the light coming through the door and blinds! I was pretty sure it wasn’t aliens, but the threat of tornados was real. Lindsey and I sat up in bed and started checking out the weather on our phones. By this time, the lightning was accompanied by torrential rain and hail. But the worst part was the WIND!!!!!! Our phones said there were “Severe Thunder storms coming through Nashville!” It said to shelter in a sturdy building, and stay indoors. Our RV was rocking really badly and we wondered if it could be considered a sturdy building! By now the guys were awake. Was it necessary to make a run to the KOA concrete bathrooms in our PJ’s at 4am? Maybe :/ Doppler radar was showing that the storm was passing over Nashville and moving East, so we figured the worst was over, and we went back to sleep (sort of). In the morning we found that several large branches had fallen all over the campground! A tree fell right on top of one of the cabins, and another fell on a shiny corvette parked just outside the grounds. The power was out throughout most of the campground. Luckily we had our generator to run one air conditioner because even with all of this weather, it was VERY warm.

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