Time to buy a weather radio

Last night it started raining at about 10 PM. Luckily we had retired to the tent at about 9:45 PM, and I was in the process of crushing Breck at cribbage when the raindrops started falling. Then we split two games of Statis-Pro baseball, with the person playing the 2009 Red Sox beating the person playing the 2009 Marlins each time. The forecast had called for a 30% of showers, so I didn't think much of it. That was the forecast from Friday.

At 7 AM I awoke to the sound of pounding rain. Without getting up, I could just tell it had rained all night, and it wasn't going to stop or even slow down anytime soon. The plan had been to get up, have breakfast, break camp, and then visit Appomattox on the way home. So I stated considering my options on how to break camp without getting soaked. It was like on those brain teasers. How do we make the minimum number of trips to the car while getting everything in it, and minimize how wet anything gets at the same time. The level of difficulty on this was increased by the fact that I had the Mazda 626. So we couldn't just throw everything into the trunk.. It had to be packed with some order if it was going to fit. My plan worked out even better than I expected.

I ran to the car with our clean clothes for the day. I backed the car up right to the tent. By balancing an umbrella between the raised trunk of the car and the rain fly of the tent, I was able to create a relatively dry passage for Breck to hand out the sleeping bags and other stuff that was in the tent. Luckily, I'm one of those campers that doesn't like to leave anything outside at night. The cooler, lawn chairs, and anything not in the tent with us goes into the car every night. I've always camped like that, and I'm not really sure why. Anyway, once all the stuff was loaded, we only had the tent itself left. I unfastened the rain fly and then while Breck held the rain fly up, I quickly took the tent down with the rain fly protecting both me and the interior of the tent from most of the deluge. Then it was a simple stuff the tent into the trunk and dive into the car exercise and we were done. We were wet, but not as soaked as expected. We stopped at the restrooms on the way out to change into dry clothes, and enjoyed a breakfast of granola / cereal bars and water in the car. The weather was horrible for the 90 minute drive North on I-81 and didn't clear up until we got east of the mountains, near Lynchburg VA.

Clearly the forecast had changed since Saturday. I had a radio on a local-ish station all evening. They never mentioned anything about the rain coming in.I think I'll buy a weather radio before the next camping trip.