Hang in there folks, plenty of posts to follow this one…I am way behind. On with the show and stay tuned for more ….

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Well it almost seemed like we would beat the storms that flooded Dallas and brought over 4” of rain to our little town.

We were able to leave on our way north early enough that no rain had fallen. Our first stop would be the Memphis KOA. This KOA is a really nice stop as the sites are pretty level however they are gravel. More about that later.

Memphis KOA the morning after the storm

The miles were clicking by on this 423 mile first leg of our trip. However, it was getting very dark grey to the east. I remembered from looking at Radar before we left that the storms were coming from Oklahoma in a south easterly course. Now unfortunately it looked like we were going to intersect with them.

Up ahead I could see a wall of rain and began slowing down. This rain was torrential. Almost immediately everyone in the road was braking and then turning on their hazzard lights. Some folks were pulling off onto the shoulder of the highway. I opted to reduce my speed to about 25 mph and proceed with the traffic that had done likewise.

I have to say, I hate towing in the rain. Mainly because I worry about all that water that has to go somewhere. I start to think about the AC gaskets and all the seals, is everything good enough to withstand this monsoon? However sometimes you have no choice but to navigate through bad weather…carefully, not like a lunatic.

Tammy got on her radar app, and told me we would have about another half hour of rain and then we would drive out of it; and we finally did.

About 2:30 we pulled into the Memphis KOA. They had obviously gotten a huge amount of rain as well. That’s the main problem with gravel sites. There is no way to keep them smooth, and so there are puddles everywhere. That makes setting up difficult for me and worse for my spoiled shepherd Eva.

There was so much standing water we couldn’t walk on grass at our site so Eva and I navigated around the gravel flooding to get to an area of higher ground for her potty breaks.

We were at this KOA for just one night but I set up the satellite dish anyway. That ended up being a huge mistake because as I was breaking down camp I found hundreds of ants all over the dish, inside the legs, and under all the brackets. I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to get rid of them.

We got out of the KOA on schedule for our next stop which is the Double J campground in Illinois; 357 miles down the road!

To continue to the next stop on this trip click here.