GETTING OUTA DODGE
June 15th-16th
Sarah had by now, urged by the clouds that seemed to have tracked us from the mountains, discovered a weather website with radar storm tracking. It also gave the official national weather warnings and alerts - and guess what? We were in the path of a 'Severe' storm, with predictions of 80mph winds and hailstones the size of golfballs. Now, I don't play golf (a good walk spoilt), but that didn't sound too comfortable nevertheless. All the same, we've all experienced nasty storms. No big deal if you're inside, right?
As it got dark, Sarah kept updating the radar picture - the sky meanwhile had become a mosaic of purples, pinks, blacks - with lightning strikes to ground and between clouds at a rate of more than 2 per second! It was night, but the sky was lit like the road by a beserk street lamp.
About an hour before the storm hit Dodge
Then it really started! The wind howled and rocked the RV. I looked up the storm procedure (too late) and we were advised to seek a basement in a building. Oops, really too late. I did venture outside though to disconnect the electrics and the water pipe, leaving us insulated within our Faraday cage. I kept telling Sarah that there was nothing to worry about, but with the light and the thunder cracking, eventually I wasn't too sure!
It was impressive, to say the least. After about 2 hours of banging overhead, it finally moved on. We removed the blankets from our heads, disentangled ourselves and I pretended I wasn't the least bit scared.
Sarah's weather reports suggested there was more to come - so we decided to run away ! :), but we obviously didn't want to leave Dodge without looking around Downtown, and Boot Hill.
Perhaps because it was a Sunday, the place was fairly quiet, and it really doesn't take long to see! We paid our money for the museum (cheesy, comme toujours), and walked around the mock-up town and the famous Boot Hill Cemetery. Except it isn't the real cemetery, there might not be anybody buried there, and... it is the size and composition of the average UK garden.
Boring, limited, lacking interactivity and amateuristic. We can only conclude, gratefully, that there is at least one thing that Europe does better than the USA - and that's museums/exhibitions.
Sarah had by now, urged by the clouds that seemed to have tracked us from the mountains, discovered a weather website with radar storm tracking. It also gave the official national weather warnings and alerts - and guess what? We were in the path of a 'Severe' storm, with predictions of 80mph winds and hailstones the size of golfballs. Now, I don't play golf (a good walk spoilt), but that didn't sound too comfortable nevertheless. All the same, we've all experienced nasty storms. No big deal if you're inside, right?
As it got dark, Sarah kept updating the radar picture - the sky meanwhile had become a mosaic of purples, pinks, blacks - with lightning strikes to ground and between clouds at a rate of more than 2 per second! It was night, but the sky was lit like the road by a beserk street lamp.
About an hour before the storm hit Dodge
Then it really started! The wind howled and rocked the RV. I looked up the storm procedure (too late) and we were advised to seek a basement in a building. Oops, really too late. I did venture outside though to disconnect the electrics and the water pipe, leaving us insulated within our Faraday cage. I kept telling Sarah that there was nothing to worry about, but with the light and the thunder cracking, eventually I wasn't too sure!
It was impressive, to say the least. After about 2 hours of banging overhead, it finally moved on. We removed the blankets from our heads, disentangled ourselves and I pretended I wasn't the least bit scared.
Sarah's weather reports suggested there was more to come - so we decided to run away ! :), but we obviously didn't want to leave Dodge without looking around Downtown, and Boot Hill.
Perhaps because it was a Sunday, the place was fairly quiet, and it really doesn't take long to see! We paid our money for the museum (cheesy, comme toujours), and walked around the mock-up town and the famous Boot Hill Cemetery. Except it isn't the real cemetery, there might not be anybody buried there, and... it is the size and composition of the average UK garden.
Boring, limited, lacking interactivity and amateuristic. We can only conclude, gratefully, that there is at least one thing that Europe does better than the USA - and that's museums/exhibitions.