River Day 04/25/2011

Ted and I made it down to the river this week, and what a night it was. I'm pretty sure this is one for the history books.

When we got to the river the skies were clear and the temperature was right around 85 degrees. We piled up some kindling for a fire and I started the charcoal to roast a chicken in the cooker that I left there last summer. When everything got going, I started fishing. The fish are finally biting and I caught over 30 before I quit counting. They were hitting helgramites and artificial lures.

After a while, the skies turned dark and a strong wind came up. Just as I finished rolling up my Jeep windows, what I can only describe as a micro burst came up; the wind was driving straight down river and at the camp at what had to be at least 60 mph. I was caught behind the house and flattened myself against the building to avoid being hit by limbs, sand, and other debris. As the first gust settled down I found Ted in the outbuilding. He said that if he had not been in the building, he's sure it would have blown over.

We took shelter in the building during the second wind burst (probably not our brightest idea) and watched limbs falling from the trees around the camp. We didn't know it at the time but three trees were uprooted and downed just below the camp. When we started to look around for more damage we found that a large tree limb fell from the tree above Ron's camper (about 40 feet up) and landed in a space about 5 feet wide between the camper and my Jeep - without hitting either one! Ted and I drug the limb out and around the back of the camper. There were large tree limbs broken from at least a half dozen trees, lying either on the ground or in the water.

Finally, after the storm settled down, the skies cleared again and I got back to fishing. The chicken and cooker survived the storm. We were joined by Trish, Kari and her boyfriend, and a couple of their friends. As you can tell from the picture the chicken came out fine.