On this trip, Nate and I headed to a state park in southern Indiana. I had been keeping an eye on the weather as the camping trip got closer and while there was rain possible in the forecast, I was reassured that the percentages of rain were relatively low. However, in the last day and during...those percentages doubled in most cases. What can you do? I opted to think that the chances for rain would pass on through. But we weren't that fortunate.
We arrived Friday evening in time to set up and then go right into making dinner. On the menu: pork and beans with some chips on the side. Classy, right?! I don't know if it gets more "camping" than that. We were eating within minutes. During the evening the sky held no promise of sun, but held many shades of grey. However, the threat of rain could not put a damper on our spirits and Nate then worked on his fire building skills while I called out "52 across, 4 letters, starts with 'P' the clue is...", from the newspaper crossword. The evening went quickly and before we knew it we were curled up and falling asleep when the rain finally fell from the sky.
That whole night it rained and stormed, but we stayed dry in our tent thanks to our new rain cover.
When we woke for the morning it was still raining, so we moved up our Saturday plan of going to Louisville for the evening, to a morning/afternoon trip. And it was such a great day! We went to breakfast and then our first stop was a the Thomas Edison museum, full of interesting quotes, facts, and inventions of his. The museum had only one man working there who just happened to have a huge wealth of knowledge of Thomas' life and story. =) Go figure. He was really interesting to listen to and we both enjoyed it very much. Afterwards, we headed to downtown Louisville and visited The Louisville Slugger Factory and enjoyed lunch at one of the local restaurants. I had a jerk chicken sandwich and it was amazing! After lunch we found a movie theater nearby and caught a movie, before heading back to the campsite. At some point during the movie all the clouds had moved out and the sun was shining brightly!
On the drive back we seemed to be heading back into a faint line of clouds in the distance. By the time we did return the grey skies were back, but we decided to ignore the possibility of rain and go about our night as we had planned. We did go see some of the parks waterfalls, had for dinner for the second night: peanut butter and banana sandwiches with apples and chips, (I enjoyed not cooking during this trip!) and even had s'mores for dessert. We also had a visitor that evening. A persistent raccoon visitor. He came sauntering from a wooded area nearby while we where chatting at the fire, took a look at us and walked over to the picnic table to go about his business of looking for trinkets or food to take home with him. Our shooing made very little impact on him, even standing up and advancing a few steps was not a bother. We chased him out of the campsite several times for him to come back in less than 2 seconds as soon as we turned our backs to walk back to our chairs. It was only a few pieces of firewood being thrown at him that finally deterred him from coming back. And the first piece of wood that hit him only seemed to delight him, perhaps thinking we were throwing large dense food at him, I don't know...but he quickly bounced over to it once it settled to explore. The second piece hit more solidly and did the trick of getting him to leave us. After taking a walk and enjoying the fire we realized that the night sky had turned beautiful...it was full of stars and all the clouds had moved out.
Sunday morning arrived with the clouds back but no rain. So we forged ahead with blueberry pancakes and bacon for breakfast and as we were finishing the last bites...a few distant rumbles turned into rain. We did a very quick pack up and finished in a light steady rain, but was able to get in the car and head back home.
In the way back, watching the rain stream down the side of the window I was thankful.
While the weather wasn't perfect, I felt our camping trip was.
