Saturday September 10, 2011-Moving day-Ridge Ranch RV Park to Hershey Conewago Campground

It rained all night long in Newton Falls. I must have been up and down a dozen times with the sound of rain and thunder during the night and finally got out of bed around 4AM because I couldn't sleep well, so I just got up. I must have dozed some in my chair because the next thing I knew, it was 7:30 and Stella was waking up. We had our coffee until the rain let up some and went to work. Again, we weren't in that much of a hurry, so we finally got ready to pull out a little after 9.


After dodging the trees, we made our way out of the park and back onto the toll road heading toward Pennsylvania. We made a couple of pretty long pit stops including one for a lunch break, At least the rain had stopped! We were very apprehensive about the weather when we got near Hershey because of all the flooding. We are meeting several other heartland owners here for the show and some of them that were planning to stay at the Hershey Highmeadow Park are having to find another place to stay because the park was flooded and will be closing. I understand that a couple of them are coming to Conewago where we are but it's already full.


We will be meeting Howard and Linda Payne at their RV-Dream rally at the Thousand Trails on Sunday. It will be good to see them again and we should meet some really nice people at their rally. The group here will start to arrive on Monday and the fun will begin!

Now to a more somber note from history. No, not the 911 attack on the World Trade Center that is all over the news now, but back to 1961 when Hurricane Carla struck the Texas Gulf coast on September 11th as the most intense storm ever to that date with sustained winds of one minute or more of 175 MPH winds. Hurricane Audrey in 1957 was the same intensity as Carla but lacked the size. Hurricane Camille in 1969 exceeded Carla in intensity but not in size. Recently, Hurricane Katrina, famous for the huge evacuation of the Gulf coast ranked well under Carla in intensity and size. As a teenager in 1961, my family and I evacuated from Galveston from Carla but our house didn't suffer any damage. Others in Galveston didn't fare as well and somewhere between 6 and 12 (sources vary on the exact numbers) lost their lives on the island. I am proud of the fact that I have experienced and ridden out all of the hurricanes in my life but I don't want to do it again. I plan to leave the area-if I'm here in the late summer at all-and will avoid any storms that come up.

May God Bless us all.

So long.