Waiting out snow, sleet, rain and other precipitation: Honey Creek State Park to Honey Creek State Park
Tuesday April 23, 2013
The temperature begins its slide from midnight. The rain continues its slide down my tent fly all night long. It just rains and rains, and gets colder and colder. The constant drumming on the tent is soothing. By 8am, however, it’s a battle between my bladder and my desire to stay in the warm sleeping bag.
About 8.30 am, the rain goes quiet! Perfect! I put on my clothes, slide my feet into my frigid shoes, and get ready to dash to the toilets. But as I poke my head out of the tent vestibule… it quickly becomes apparent that the rain has stopped, but the precipitation has not. It is now snowing!
I quickly dash to the bathrooms. They are pleasantly warm, but not sauna-like hot, like I wish they would be. I head back to the tent, cuddle down in the bag, and enjoy the laziest day of my life in the past 2.5 years. My bad mood of yesterday has slipped away. After 12 years of living in Australia, actually seeing snow fall is a bit of a novelty. I don’t really mind the cold, either, since I’ve got plenty of warm gear, and I can stay dry.
So I spend the rest of the day cuddled down in the sleeping bag reading, listening to music and sleeping, while it proceeds to precipitate the entire day.
Zip, slirrrp, silence. Ziiip, sliiip. Splat, splat, splat! Today, I also fine-tune my detection of what type of precipitation is falling by the way it sounds when it hits and slides down the tent fly. It rains, sleets, snows, ice pellets, or does a combination of two or three of those, at various times throughout the day. At midnight last night, my little thermometer read 47F. Most of today it hovers between 27 and 29F in the tent. But I’m a happy little camper today.
I also get a laugh out of my Marine Corps buddies. The few, the strong, the proud, the cold wimps. They pack up and leave about 10am, even though they are in full hook-up sites. Hahahahaha!
