Post #225041 by Aaron's Akua on Tue, Apr 4, 2006 10:36 PM

Sunday night at "The Lodge" the few of us that were left watched the weather reports while figuring out where we wanted to go for dinner. There were large thunderheads on the horizon as the sun went down (ominous, no?). The weatherman was going into detail about the storm, the tornado alerts across several adjacent counties (which are pretty small in TN), and the areas that were "seeing some rotation". This is all foreign material for the 3 of us that were in from California. Swanky & Steph were worrying a bit about their place, which was in the tornado warning area, & called a neighbor to see how it was going. The news was telling us of "golf-ball" sized hail, warning people to garage their cars & get ready to head for the basement if necessary. This seemed to be happening all around us, but their was no rain where we were & it looked cool so we all packed it up & headed out for dinner & drinks at Deadbeat Dan's down the highway a piece.

Later back at the cabin, about 2 or 3 in the morning I woke up & all hell seemed to have broken loose. It was worse than the snoring that had permeated the house the last few nights before most of the crew had packed up & left. I got up to close the window & saw that the rain was coming down in buckets. There was a big wall of windows looking out on the cabin balcony, and outside the lightning was flashing stacato beats like a strobe light through the fog, with thunder literally shaking the house. This lasted an hour or more, but grogginess eventually won over & I drifted off. I've don't think I've ever experienced a thunderstorm as intense as that (But hey, I'm from SoCal, what do I know??). The next morning the sky was clear and sunny & it all felt like a dream as we headed off for the airport. That was the exciting end to our Coon-Tiki trip!