All hail Mother Nature

Wednesday, 10 October.  Greetings blog readers.  Today was going to be a “quiet” day for us and allow us to “catch our breath” and maybe restock the motorhome.  Well, it started out quiet enough.  Some grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s (a favorite place of ours), over to Camping World to pick up a couple things for the motorhome, a quick stop at the local Wal-Mart, and then lunch at the In-N-Out hamburger joint right off 101.  As we were walking back to the car I mentioned to Lynette that the skies looked awfully dark and stormy on the other side of town (Morgan Hill), which is where our campground is located.  As I drove down one of the main thoroughfares, the skies continued to get dark.  Since I had the window down, I remarked how it “smelled like rain” was coming.  I kid you not – it smelled like rain outside, honest. And the temperature had dropped from 71 degrees at the In-N-Out to something like 52.  Just as we reach the campground, it started to rain lightly, but the skies still looked very threatening and the wind was beginning to pick up.  We quickly unloaded the car and had just closed the door to the motorhome when all hell broke loose – and I mean virtually all hell!  As in a hail storm!  The skies open up with marble-sized hail and we were pelted with the white ice for a good 20 minutes.  The noise inside the RV was so loud we could not hear one another talk.  We even yelled at one another but that wasn’t much better.  Mother Nature at her fiercest is amazing to watch, and she gave us quite a show over that third of an hour.  The wind whipped the almost fall-like leaves from the oak trees in the campground like they were butterflies in a hurricane.  Then, as quickly as the storm came, it was gone; just like that, gone.  It drizzled for another 10 minutes or so, but the hail storm had moved on.  Nothing on the local weather news about any hail storm; just a chance of showers.  Mother Nature had once again fooled mankind.  I hope the couple pics we took during the latter stages of the storm show what was left behind.  The road gravel road that runs beside us was literally white with hail stones.  The bad news for us was the aftermath of running water from the storm that accumulated under the motorhome.  Our two front jacks are now in about three inches of standing water that doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.  I'm hoping the jacks don’t sink into the ground, because then we’d be in serious trouble.  Yours truly would then have to get under the RV and dig those suckers out enough to raise them.  Fortunately, it appears from talking to other campers who've been here before that the ground around here is very hard, very chalky.  So, if we’re lucky we should be okay.  What an exciting way to spend the afternoon, eh?  Here’s the pics I promised.  Look for an update on the situation in my next blog.  Cheers to all!

Looking out the motorhome door at our lawn chairs

I stepped outside during the storm's drizzling rain to get this 

shot of the lawn chair and our patio mat.

No, I'm not squinting (virtually no sun out), but rather the darn hail is very COLD and I'm in sandals so my toes are cold, too...and the photographer is taking her sweet time in taking the shot!