We left early around 8:30 am so we could hit the dump station and still get to the next park at a reasonable time. Summer Breeze campground was really nice and I almost didn’t want to leave, but it was time to get to a new spot. The drive was unremarkable till we hit the city (village) limits when a dark, black cloud enveloped the town and our view out the front. We pulled over so I could check the NWS CONUS Doppler radar web site.
By now the lightning was spectacular out the front window. Not really a good thing when you consider what that means. Anyway, I determined the storm was moving southwest and we should be thru it quickly. Wow, was I incorrect! We started to head to the campground and the storm hit us like a brick. We got to the turnoff for the road out to the point when the rain and wind picked up significantly. At one point on that small road, Kathy started yelling that she couldn’t see, slow down! Inconsequential when you realize I was the one driving.
We came around a 90-degree turn and it was like we hit a hurricane, The rain was horizontal and hitting us dead on, making the wipers on high of no use then. I was just driving by braille then, hoping not to hit one of the bumps. I eventually found the dirt road turnoff for the campground. Now we only had to get thru the locked gate, to which we had a code. But when we got there, it was raining too hard to open the window to punch it in.
Then out of nowhere a person started walking toward us with a small umbrella. He was going to open the gate for us. You need to realize it was a torrential rainfall. How his umbrella stayed open in the wind gusts was amazing to me. What he didn’t know was that I knew the code for the gate, but the rain was coming in at such an angle it was streaming down the driver’s window channel on the inside. I was just trying to keep it from getting on the floor in the coach. I had lots of towels shoved into the channel to sop it up prior to the channel filling and overflowing on the floor. For the most part it worked. And the guy opening the gate made it even better so I didn’t have to open that window to punch in the code. [Thank you, Tony!]
The sun came out just a few minutes after we parked and I learned the name of the good Samaritan. His name was Tony and his wife’s name was Julie. He had just purchased his coach a few months ago too. His license plate was a take-off on Cousin Eddy from the Christmas Vacation movie. I had not seen that one, but am looking for a download soon as Cousin Eddy had a motorhome. It was the same year as ours and had done some upgrades to get it just right.
An hour later we were sitting outside watching the water as the sun was slowly making its way toward the horizon over this glorious little bay in front of us. Large cargo ships were traversing the waterway in the distance, and now that the sun is down, with full lights blazing.
We sat outside talking with the neighbors about their travels and where they were heading till the mosquitoes forced all of us to head into our RV’s quickly. Tonight was Kathy’s mosquito introduction. We don’t have mosquitoes in San Diego.