It's been ten days now since I've been able to touch a cat. I haven't even really seen any either, except for about two seconds of the backend of one moving quickly out of sight and lots of pictures! If all goes well we will be home Thursday evening and reunited with all my delightful furry friends!! I can't wait!!
Meanwhile, my friend Jana has been looking after the needs of all the cats. She has graciously been sending pictures every so often, which has been wonderful. Here are a few:
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photo courtesy of Jana S. |
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photo courtesy of Jana S. |
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photo courtesy of Jana S. |
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photo courtesy of Jana S. |
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photo courtesy of Jana S. |
We have been tent camping on our road trip. Tent camping is fun, although sleeping on the ground is getting less comfortable the older I get! I think the earth is getting harder every year, maybe that's tied to global warming?!
Last night, we were camping in Belvidere, South Dakota. All day we had clear skies and when we set up camp the weather was very pleasant.
As you can see, the blue tent is setup next to the "Willow-car", our little VW Golf, which reminds me a lot of Willow. It's cute, small and silver, just like Willow! The little diesel engine purrs just like my Willow too!
After we were settled into the tent for the night, the campground manager came by and said a very severe thunderstorm might be coming our way. Yikes, I hopped online and read this:
The part that stood out to me was the "golf ball size hail and 70 MPH wind gusts" and the statement: "People and animals outdoors
will be injured." Notice they don't say "might" be injured it said "will" - double yikes! The radar showed this:
This nasty red blob of severe weather was heading right for us! The campground manager highly recommended we pull up our tent, so we did. We upgraded from a tent site to one of their little camping cabins. I was really worried about the Willow-car, as golf ball size hail would do significant damage. We pulled the car as close to the cabin as possible in hopes it would shield it from some damage. Then it was just a matter of settling into the cabin and praying.
The lightening really lit up the sky. This is lightening over our cabin, you can see the Willow-car in the bottom right corner. In the end, the storm was slightly off to the side, so we only caught the edge of it. That meant no hail, just heavy rain and wind. About 2am, I awoke with another storm passing right over us, it socked us with more lightening, heavy winds and rain but again, thankfully no hail.
In the morning, we packed up the Willow-car and continued our trip toward home. I'm very grateful for Greg and Betty, the very helpful managers of
Belvidere KOA Campground. They didn't have to warn us, but they did and they were very helpful in making sure all the campers were safe as possible for the storms.