The good news is it’s been raining in Georgia since lunchtime yesterday, exactly the kind of rain we need, the steady rain that soaks in to the drought-dried ground instead of just running off like most of the gully-washer thunderstorms we get. As of last week we were nearly 12 inches of rain behind this year, and this has to have helped.
The bad news is, this was our camping weekend. Andrea and the girls headed out Friday afternoon to choose the campsite, and even got our tent, which is big enough to park a small car inside, mostly set up.
I headed out after work and we immediately cooked dinner and enjoyed being in the woods. There were several deer grazing around a nearby clearing, which gave us something to watch as dusk fell. It surprised me that Finley wasn’t the least bit interested in the deer, though late at night when something was poking around the edge of the campsite, he must have growled at it for an hour.
In the morning, I used my mobile phone to check on the weather forecasts, which all week had been calling for a 20 or 30 percent chance of showers on Saturday afternoon. As Saturday afternoon got closer, the percentage chance of rain kept increasing, until we were pretty certain we were going to get some rain. Elizabeth went on a “big girl bike” (this phrase is hers, to differentiate it from the tricycle she used to ride) around the sizeable campground, and I went on solo a road ride to Appling and back. We both finished our rides in an hour and a half, and it was just starting to slowly rain.
We ate some lunch, then spent an hour or so playing in the water at the lake, with Elizabeth splashing around having a good time, and Finley chasing a stick until I got bored with throwing it. We got cold and headed back to the campsite around 1:30. By 5:00, we had tried to get Elizabeth to take a nap, but she wasn’t really interested so we were struggling with the question, “How do you entertain a 3-year-old for a day and a half inside a tent?” We were expecting a rain shower or two, not an all-day soaker, so we hadn’t brought any rain gear. Besides, we’re in a drought, why would we need rain gear?
We decided to come home and collect the tent in the morning, which turns out to be a good decision as it’s STILL raining out there as I write this. Elizabeth was sad we were leaving the campsite last night, but we played for a while in the tent after announcing the decision and she got used to it. Turns out she needn’t have worried — she slept solidly from the moment we arrived home at 6 PM, until 7 this morning!
So I woke up in our comfy bed, and now I’m sipping a cappuccino listening to some springy Baroque music, really roughing it while I blog. But soon it’ll be time to go eat a wet picnic lunch and collect the tent — this time we’ll take our raingear!