Storms and the Little Things

Today is our last day of work until next Wednesday. We were scheduled for Tuesday, but Gary will have to remind them that he needs Tuesday off for treatments all summer. Fortunately Dollywood has been closed on Tuesdays, but beginning this week they will be open every day. We also composed a letter asking if we could come back to work this fall after a visit to Raleigh in August.

We are expecting our daughter and her family and Gary’s mom tomorrow for Memorial Day weekend, and we are really excited to see how much the kids have grown. We haven’t seen them for a long time, and the weather will be perfect the whole weekend!

We’ll see how work goes today as there are severe thunderstorms and hail predicted for this afternoon. A gusty wind picked up last night and at 2 am I went out to untether the awning and put it in. It has an automatic sensor that we don’t use (we remove the fuse) because we find it too sensitive. A tiny gust of wind will make it retract, and although we don’t hang lights on our awning, we do have a little hanging philodendron and our Coleman lantern on each corner. But we are not foolhardy. That thing is very expensive to replace, plus it could do a lot of damage to the coach if left out during strong winds. We make it a policy to always put it in when we leave camp (unless promised to be a perfect day) but especially if winds are predicted to be 15 mph or higher. I am a risk taker, and it bothers me that other campers didn’t put anything away when the tornados were predicted, and nothing happened to them. But common sense rules in this case, and even though I’d like to leave things status quo, we don’t. We just don’t take that risk. Bigger risks, yes. Like going full-timing. Still loving that.

As predicted, around 5pm the lightning shut down the rides, and people started to file past my Show Street Lemonade stand on their way home. However, they all wanted to buy something for the ride. The thunder and lightning were getting closer and it was getting dark. A collegue came to say ‘shut down your shop’ and just as he did, the rains came – along with hail and a wind that blew everything off of every shelf and even the hat off my head (and I use bobby pins to hold it on)! I was drenched in about 20 seconds with people screaming all over the place running for shelter. I quickly covered the register, then grabbed the cotton candy and bags of chips escaping over the side, stepping on cups and lids all over the floor. The wind kept whipping trays and straws down the road as the hail gradually turned to rain and the wind decreased to maybe 20 mph. The bad part was over in about 5 minutes, enough to turn our pretty stream into flowing mud and land a tree on the zip line. This weather – I don’t know…

I closed the register, clocked out and went to help Gary and Kathy in Sausage Works. They were still cooking, but were soon told to close, and then the cleaning started. We got out of there at 7:20 and drove home looking at some more ominous clouds over the mountains. We didn’t know what we’d find at home, but we knew we’d find our awning all curled up like we left it. We also noticed that no one else had done anything to prepare for the storm. The sign we made was on the ground and the rug had blown up a little, but the little hummer feeder was still stuck on the windshield. It’s the little things that matter sometimes, right?

We hope you are safe and sound where ever you are.