Tonight we're staying in a somewhat cozy motel in South Bend, Indiana.
Last night, we were camping near Gettysburg, and it was definitely our most exciting camping experience yet.
We capped off the day yesterday by going on a ghost tour in Gettysburg -- where a guy dressed in supposedly period clothing drags a group of about 25 people around the streets of Gettysburg and tells us all about various spooky sightings and other phenomena that supposedly happened nearby.
The tour was interesting, and there were some genuinely creepy parts. Like when we were walking, and a guy dressed like a union soldier stood leaning against the lamppost on the other side of the street, just staring at us, and didn't move until we'd all moved on. It caused a bunch of whispers of 'do you see him? is he real?' among the tour participants.
The last stop on the tour was a building where a couple had supposedly seen a scene from the 1800s, then, when they looked again, saw the current art gallery inside the window. As the tour ended, Katrina got a nosebleed, and we walked carefully past the possibly-haunted building.
We drove back to our campsite, and we saw lightening flash across the sky all the way back, but heard no thunder, so I figured we were not in any danger from nearby lightning, and we crawled into the tent to go to sleep.
The combination of the lightning and ghost stories was enough to convince Abby that something was out there. She asked me what every snap and crackle was outside the tent, and as we started to hear the occasional boom of thunder, she'd check to make sure it was indeed thunder. I could tell when she fell asleep, because she quit checking on the thunder.
An hour and a half later, there was no question that there was thunder. The lightning flashes were visible inside our closed tent, and the thunder was booming loudly together with the flashes of light. We hightailed it out of the tent and into the car, where I cracked the window to be able to hear the thunder better.
The open window lasted for about ten minutes, because then the rain started. And boy, it wasn't fooling around. It rained and rained and the lightning flashed and the thunder boomed, and Abby was lying on her back in the back seat, with her head towards one door and her feet up on the back of the seat. Katrina was curled in the corner, and she had by far the worst position of the three of us. As Abby would fall asleep, her feet would drift down the back of the seat and into Katrina.
A couple of hours later, I woke up and realized that the lightning was gone, even though the rain was still coming down like it had to get 40 days and 40 nights worth into the next twelve hours. Due to the extreme uncomfortableness of the car, we scampered back into the tent. I took a brief moment to retrive Katrina's tennis shoes, which has unfortunately been left outside. I dumped the inch of water that had collected in them and tossed them into the car.
By this morning, the rain had mostly stopped and it was time to survey the damage. The tent was a little damp on the bottom inside, but had held up pretty well, which is a good thing, because the labels on our air mattresses are very clear that they are NOT to be used as floatation devices.
Posted by Rachel at July 14, 2004 11:31 PM