A Non-Traditional Easter at Red River Gorge

Living away from our family brings feelings of longing on holidays. For me, anyway. Since moving to Cincinnati, we try different things on holidays we spend here. Although we miss the Easter Egg Hunt at Mimee and Pawpaw's house, with the myriad of cousins on my husband's side, we have been successful the two Easters we have spent in Cincy doing things to make Easter our own. The first one we had here, we were living in our rental house on North Bend Road. It snowed the night before, and we had our first freezing Easter and our first indoor Easter Egg hunt, complete with a nice, cozy fire in the fire place afterward. Definitely something new, because in Alabama, folks are wearing their shorts and tank tops by Easter!

Our second Easter, we happened to be visiting our Alabama family. So this, our third Easter warranted something different. I've been itching to go camping for a few weeks now. Wanting to go so badly, I could hardly stand it! So I picked going camping over Easter weekend. We went to Red River Gorge one very chilly Thanksgiving, and have been wanting to go back. So we did!

There must be some type of Red River Gorge curse for us or something. The first one, we camped in 23 degree temps. Tent camped. It snowed, it rained, and our breakfast items were frozen the second day, so we gave it up and went to Waffle House, then home again. While it was a great non-traditional Thanksgiving...we had a lovely time hiking and such, it was definitely a cold, cold Thanksgiving! So this time, I checked the weather. Saturday called for a beautiful, sunny, mid-fifties temps, with much the same for Sunday. Gorgeous! So Phillip took off work on Friday and we got ready to go.

The one problem was that it was supposed to be rainy on Friday afternoon. No problem...the plan was to leave Cincinnati around three in the afternoon, take our time, do lunch, whatever, and arrive around 5:30 or so after the rain passed. We arrive in the Red River Gorge area as planned in torrential rain. Biblical proportions type of rain. The rain was so intense, we had to yell to one another to be heard in the car! Upon arriving at the campground, we saw large-sized hail littering the ground everywhere! Most was largeish-marble sized, but there were some huge golf-ball sized ones too!



There was so much of it, we prolly could've filled our cooler with it! I've never seen anything like it! We had quite a decision to make as far as obtaining our campsite. Most were absolutely flooded. Or the tent area was flooded, but the grill area was okay. Or vice-versa. So while I wouldn't have picked this particular site in any other circumstance, because it was right in the middle of a driving loop, it was by far the driest we could find. We set up the tents in the rain...The red one for Archie and Phillip, the green one for Lawrence and me. At least the rain wasn't torrential anymore! Just an annoying steady soaking rain.



Looks depressing, doesn't it?? Phillip tried so hard to get a fire going. I mean he really tried. No amount of Survivorman skills could get a flame going in this environment! Here they are trying the Firestick method learned in Cub Scouts:



After a long time, I decided I was done, was getting out of the rain and into the tent and going to bed. The Phillip and Archie decided to cook hot dogs on the camp stove, under the car hatch. So they got the stuff set up and I got in the tent. The minute I settled in, the torrential, biblical rain begain again! Which the two boys were out in. This is what it sounded like:



It stopped after several hours, during which time I went to sleep. I woke up sometime during the night, and it started again. This time, I was just really mad. This stuff was supposed to be outta there by 7pm!!!! If I didn't have to get out in the rain, I would've left then and there. But I settled back in and slept.

Don't worry...things begin to drastically improved (fortunately!) by Saturday! Stay tuned!