Day 2
June 16th, 2013
Foss Lake Oklahoma

The drive across Oklahoma on I-40 is very scenic: full of rolling hills, flat grass plains and plentiful vegetation.  This is where the big sky country starts for us Easterners and we raced a thunderstorm off to our starboard for a large portion of the drive west from OKC.  We made it to our campsite with plenty of day light to spare.  We set up camp, had a hot meal (veggie tacos), and a few pleasant walks on the beach.  The pictures from the previous blog post are from this campsite.

We watched the sunset, had a campfire and overall some much needed down time for the dog (and us).  When we settled down for the night it was comfortable and we all went right to sleep.

Sometime after 2 am I woke with the dog looking at me meaningfully (never a good sign) and the tent softly swaying in the wind.  I saw lightning in the distance across the lake and then behind us.  I sat for a minute and then realized we were about to get rained on.  Half-asleep Ben and I tried to put the rain fly on the tent.  We utterly failed at this until we realized it wasn't our half-awareness keeping us back...   it was the increasing strength of the now full bore gale we were working in. We watched our supplies on the picnic table blow 3 - 6 feet away and the embers of the dead fire, re-ignite and fly off towards the lake, we began to realize this was going to be a long night...

No tornados came through the campsite but the thunderstorm was preceded by a fierce wind and we were forced to take shelter in the bathhouse.  When the wind finally slacked a bit we headed back to the car and the reamins of our flattened, soaked tent. Unable (and unwilling) to salvage the tent for the night, we repurposed our seats in the car for bedding and lightly slept until dawn. Our spirits were dampened again, but we packed up and headed for ABQ New Mexico.  Where at least we would again have a real house to sleep in and a guarantee of no thunderstorms.