Rain Rain, Here to Stay

Man, oh, man—this is what being fluid about travel plans is all about.

With so many things to do in the area, all plans for the day are put on hold, especially my first choice of a hike in Brown County State Park 50 miles south. Thunderstorms are predicted all day, and rain has been dumping for the past hour.

My ten-year-old backup laptop PC died this morning. Already on life support with a flaky hard drive and a decrepit battery, its demise was sealed by a minor spike during the beginnings of an electrical storm. The Mac survived the same, but for now it’s on battery only.

All this rain makes for some pretty soft dead bugs on the rig, so during a lull in the lightning, I don my Chaco sandals (maybe I need hip boots), grab my extendable broom, and scrub the worst of the crud from the front of the Flying Heart. It’s the first time I’ve been able to get to it because most RV campgrounds don’t allow rig-washing onsite.

The rain is easy to be out in—almost warm in the Indiana summer, but very, very wet because the raindrops are so dang big. The shell of my raincoat is soaked after only five minutes, and my rolled up jeans hang heavy with water. The lightning starts to come back, and I abandon my metal lightning-rod broom and head back inside.

The campground roads near me are starting to flood. Smaller cars are up to their hubcaps as they drive by, and the truck’s passenger-side tires are in almost two inches of puddle…as is my front yard. The right side of the trailer is in a low spot and propped on over two inches of boards to level the rig; the plywood is swelling.

For now the best I can do is hunker down with some hot tea and do stuff around the rig. This consists mostly of grousing at the delay in my plans and getting rid of papers that seem to accumulate when I’m not watching.


The second hour of rain has me calling the front desk.

“Hi, this is Audrey, site 203. I’m surrounded by a lot of water here. Should I be worried about flooding? Maybe I should move to another site?”

“No problem, honey. It’ll be fine. There’s a sump pump right next to your trailer. The water will drain away once the rain stops.”

OK. So when is it gonna stop?

Another half inch creeps up the tires and barbecue ring, and I need somebody to talk to. I call Tom and Mimi, experienced RVrs and my support line in times like this. I am glad for the moral support, especially as they relate stories of being rained out or needing to wait out weather on their own trips. Go with the flow, Audrey. Go with the flow.

After four hours, the pelting rain finally stops and my little home and truck are the sole occupants of their own lake.

I slosh out again. The capped sewer pipe is under shin-deep water (good thing I hadn’t hooked up yet). On the other side, the level is over my ankles. My 9x12 woven vinyl patio mat is floating and muddy, blessedly anchored by a water-logged wooden picnic table. The foot-tall barbecue ring is half submerged, with bits of wood bobbing in the middle. I can just make out tiny bubbles rising near the picnic table…the sump pump doing its thing, I hope.

The pond extends over several sites. (My sympathy goes out to the fellow in a tent.) Nearby, people send rooster tails from their cars as they squish through the roads. I once again grab the cleaning brush and give both the truck and the rig a thorough scrubbing with the water in my lake.




That evening I talk to Dean and find out that the city and south counties had been hit hard…seven inches in the south and Brown County (good thing I skipped the hike), four inches in the city, with lots of power outages from lightning.

Dean’s neighborhood suffered quite a bit—trees and branches crashing into parked cars, a transformer across the street catching fire, several blocks nearby out of power for the next four days. Dean was at work for the worst of it, and thankfully neither his home nor his trees suffered any damage, although his next door neighbor’s car is now tarped and taped because of a falling branch.