Thursday 6/27 recap
What a day. It started so beautifully, and so ended stressfully. We ended the day exhausted. We are grateful to be safe.
The departure from Yellowstone’s Fishing Bridge was well executed. We were really well organized; we have this packing up business down to a science! Plus, we got a great night’s sleep after just enough hiking on Wednesday and no alarm clock. We were on our way by a little after 9, with the intention to get to our campground before some anticipated evening rain there. We had the opportunity to drive out through the East Entrance road, which was the last major part of the park that we hadn’t seen.
What a sight. More beautiful lakes and LOTS of uphill into topography that was different from everything we had seen. The road climbed through Sylvan pass which is over 8,500 feet. As you might guess, we were both feeling it! The rock faces on both sides of us were massive, and we felt small again but in a whole new way. From there, the descent was more gradual and just as beautiful.
Our next major area was the Buffalo Bill Reservoir and Dam. Damn, it was gorgeous. As you got to the dam, there were a few tunnels to go through, which always unnerves me a bit as a driver in Livvy. But I was assured by Rick that it was safe, and reinforced by the fact that there were absolutely no height/width restriction signs. Oh, and we knew from texting with Wes and Erin that there were about 15 minutes ahead of us. So if they made it through, I knew that we definitely would too!
This took us into Cody, WY. Cute, cute town and lots available. In fact, Wes and Erin had suggested going there for a rodeo one night. It would have been fun, but a miserable drive since it was about 90 minutes to get there. I can’t imagine doing that drive back late at night as it was strenuous on a beautiful morning! But as stated before, they are much more apt to that kind of adventure (whereas I want to be resting by 9:30pm). Anyhow, I’m glad that we all agreed that maximizing our time in the park was far greater than the opportunity to see a rodeo (that would have taken many hours of park time away). Glad that we made that call! But if you’re ever in Cody, they said that the rodeo is super entertaining. (I would plan to just stay in Cody, though, if and when we go)
From there, we had about 6 more hours on the road. We’re predictable now in saying that it was really beautiful, new landscapes, etc etc. So I won’t try to describe our time in WY, MT and then ND other than to say we reconnected with our previous route in Billings MT. From there, we have now visited a few of the same gas stations and even knew where there was a good DQ to stop at for a frozen treat. Let’s face it, driving days warrant a mid-day ice cream cone to perk you right up.
When we made the last gas stop and picked up our DQ, we talked about the super dark clouds that had formed and seemed to be following us. It was ominous and we knew they were likely heading our way. We each took turns driving, seemingly staying just ahead of the storm for a few hours. But we knew that at some point, we were going to experience it. There was just no way around it.
Our destination was Dickinson, ND. We knew that storms were predicted around 7pm and we felt that we were making good time to get set up there before the rain. But then we started seeing lightning in front of us, too, and confirmed that they had early rain, with more to come. Uh oh.
We drove through some light rain, but thankfully nothing major. We arrived at the campground and the weather app said we had a short break before the big storm. We impressed ourselves with our outstanding setup skills in near-record time, even with having to take a couple of extra steps to get level. I took time to read the campground info, even walked outside to see where the shower/laundry building was at since that was designated as the safe space in a storm. (It was about 10 spaces away) The campground also indicated that there would be an alarm in the community if there was a tornado warning.
We told ourselves we could just relax now, but that only lasted for a moment. We had a salad and watched it grow dark and eerily quiet. And then the wind. Oh my, Livvy was rocking; the thunderstorm warning on the weather app said up to 70mph winds and that “mobile homes could expect damage”. Just as the rain started and the winds picked up further, we were putting on our shoes and raincoats. It was coming down in buckets. Then our phones both indicated the TORNADO WARNING alert for where we were at, and we were out of there in an instant.
Needless to say, we were soaked in the walk/run over to the laundry building. It was another 5 minutes before the community alarm went off and still 5 minutes more before 2 other families came in. One of them was a really nice couple from Manitoba who was as bewildered as we were to be experiencing this. The other family had 2 dogs and 3 sugar gliders (Side note, I had no idea what these little creatures were but they were tucked into a scarf-like thing around the woman and they were screaming. They are apparently part of the possum family. It just added to the strangeness. And of course, Rick was totally fascinated by them.) This is a big campground, and that was the only real “building”, so we figure a lot of people just stayed in their vehicles. Not smart. We didn’t want to be one of those people that we all read about in the news. We knew it wasn’t safe in Livvy so we did the safest thing we could do.
I am so so so so so so so glad we didn’t have the animals with us.
The storm went on for only about 20 minutes, but it certainly felt longer. This area gets an average of 15 inches of rain per YEAR, and we experienced .95 inch of it in that one hour period. Crazy. There were some downed branches and lots of short-lived deep puddles, but the ground is so dry that it was soaked up pretty quickly later in the evening. The sun even came out later.
We were pretty rattled when we got back. During the storm we both stayed lighthearted and calm, but our nerves got the better of us when we came back to make dinner. We had a big cocktail, did some of our catch-up blogging and then just tried to relax. It was nice to have wifi back after several days without, and it is lightning fast here (pun intended). Rick even ordered us a new toy (Starlink) so that we can always have wifi on the road. Yes, we might need it for working remotely someday, but for now it is so that we can just feel connected and make contact in case of emergency. We got a little too close to emergency, and so I think that was a calming mechanism, even though it was an intended splurge purchase. We will be excited to try it out and keep our blogging consistent (we don’t like playing catch up)
Needless to say, it wasn’t easy to fall asleep even though the storms had cleared out several hours before. I even woke up with a sore jaw because it had stressed me out so badly!
We are grateful to be safe, to have been close to a secure building and that no real damage occurred. We will always keep an eye to the skies and are grateful for the weather app that kept us well informed throughout. Hopefully we never experience that again!
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