Hail, thunder, rain, and lightning...a flat tire too....

Our Location:  Hereford Aquatic Center, Hereford, Texas

No blog yesterday so I’ll do one big one tonight. Friday was a sort of quiet day, we did a fuel run (forgot to take the camera so no photos of that), a few groceries and found a First National Bank with an international ATM. Back home we enjoyed the rest of the afternoon just puttering around and doing a few little things. 

 

It was dark over there, the water was a dark green colour.

 

Well that is until I noticed one of the trailer tires looked a bit slack. Sure enough down to 40 pounds. Looking around I noticed a nail head sticking out of the tread. I was not impressed. Alison offered to remove the tire for me (she had also taken a nail out of one of her tires here the day we arrived) for me on Saturday (the next morning). 

 

A bright spot among the darkness.

Looking at the sky and checking the weather we were in the path of a severe line of thunderstorms moving at about 50 miles an hour through the area. We found a place here we could take refuge if necessary, pulled in the big slide and hooked up the truck due to the extreme winds that we were expecting. Soon the hail came, started off small, like the eraser on the end of a pencil, ending up about the size of a marble. It went on and on and on and on and on. Eventually it turned to rain and eventually stopped but for a couple of hours it was an ugly night here. A fair bit of lightning and some thunder but not the big winds they were expecting.

 

It was very dark to the north of us and we thought at first it miss us.

 

A few small dents on the truck but nothing major, and I haven’t yet climbed up the ladder to look at the panels on the roof. I will when we park in Natural Falls State Park. Still this morning there was a great deal of water laying around everywhere but I didn’t see any damage. Lark (a lady from Wisconsin and a friend of Alison’s) had both of her vent covers broken by the hail but other than that we couldn’t really find any thing except a couple of small dents on the vehicles. I think we were fortunate. At one point the hail covered the grass and the pavement, like snow. 

But then this rolled right over us.

This morning dawned with bright blue skies and warmer temperatures. After coffee, Lark left, heading toward Oklahoma City for the  night before heading on home. Alison came by to take the tire off and lucky thing she did because only two of the bolts were what one would consider is tight, the rest were snug but not as tight as they should have been. With the tire off, we headed to Walmart to get it patched. They assured me it was patched and plugged but I’m not so certain.
 

It was clear then to the north.

 

Back home Alison and I put the tire back on and went around to check all of the wheels, just the one with the nail was questionable, the others were all fine, very tight. So I’m not sure why that would be but I’m going to keep an eye on it for certain. 

After things settled down, it started to clear up.

 

After that I helped Alison with a couple little things, we chatted for a couple of hours discussing many things. Finally we parted ways and I came home to have some lunch, Riley and I spent the rest of the day doing a few puttering things. 

Blurry but you get the idea.

 

I chatted with my buddy Ron, we’ll be meeting up with him and his lovely wife Sharon on Tuesday. We are looking forward to that, it’s been a couple of years since we’ve seen them. 

Still raining but you can see the hail stones washed into piles. That isn't white stones, it's hail.

 

So the day is winding down and tomorrow we are off to Elk City, OK. One step closer to our week long destination. Hopefully we get no more bad weather. So that’s it, our last couple of days. 

 

The water has heaped the hail in piles.

 

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed your visit.  

 

That's water running down the sidewalk into the pond. A accumulating in puddles in the parking lot. I didn't do any enhancing of any kind to this photo. This is how it came from the camera. If you look at the first photo in this post you can see how dry the parking lot is before the storm.

 

Until next time… take care, be safe, 

 

Deb

Wind, rain, flat tire.......

Our Location: ONRoute, Tilbury, Ontario

A cold night outside but not too bad inside, we were tucked under our covers and only noticed the cold upon getting out of bed. We both slept in my bed, opting to keep the slides in so there would be no accumulation of ice should it happen. It was a lucky move, we had a bit of ice to be sure but it appeared to be from the cold wind, instead of the freezing rain part. 

For some reason the internet connection wasn't good last night. It showed four bars but was very slow. The pictures wouldn't up load  at all.  It took a long time to even post the blog and nothing else would load after that, so I gave up after about an hour. This morning it worked great for a while but is once again showing signs of not working so well. Oh well, it is what it is, the phones work great and that's what matters most. 

We needed to partially open one of the slides this morning to get the dry cat food which we forgot to take out yesterday morning. Since that is the side with the hose in the window I needed to go out to ensure nothing happened that shouldn't happen. I'm glad I stepped outside. A thin layer of ice was over the handle, and the steps but not the off wind side of the walls. I did however notice a flat tire just as I stepped down on the ground. The front tire on the Igloo is completely flat. So we will be here until tomorrow for certain. 

We got the cat food, pulled the slide back in and I began the process of calling the auto club at 8:30 am. I very rarely ever use it but it's nice to have when we need it right? The nice lady that I spoke with, whose name happened to be Deborah, was very pleasant and friendly. Hm.....now the problems are starting. First she can't locate the ONRoute address to send someone. That is resolved within a few minutes. Good to go right? No, another problem.  It says my contract has been cancelled. Not possible, I paid back in November. Further digging show's it's been transferred, but closed in Southern Ontario, since it was moved to Northern Ontario when I contacted them about moving. Okay, Deborah will call N. Ontario CAA to get the information to send someone to us. Some issue on that end, Deborah will continue to look into and call ME back when she has the answer. Within 5 minutes she calls me with yet another issue. They don't open until 10 am. Now I have to call back after that time. So here we sit waiting for 10 am so I can call back and get this thing moving forward before the day ends.

 I will condense this at it took most of the day to get the job accomplished. Numerous calls, discussions, and information were exchanged which still didn't seem to be correct even by the time the job was almost complete. The first fellow to arrive had trouble finding us, his jack wasn't big enough and they had completely screwed up the information. Second fellow called, laughed when I told him the weight and said he couldn't help me but he'd let dispatch know. Eventually two dispatchers were needed to complete the task and at 3:30 pm on the dot, 2 nice young fellows from Kaltire showed up and were gone within 10 minutes, everything fixed and we're ready to roll when the afternoon comes tomorrow. 

The tire had a separation issue and went flat over night instead of blowing apart on the road. How lucky is that? So the spare tire is on, the tire in need of replacement is on the back of the Igloo and when we reach Hamilton I will have a new tire put on the rim and placed on the Igloo, putting the spare back where it belongs. They were young, sweet and very helpful. I was certain to give them a nice tip for their troubles. 

Over the course of the day I discovered where the cold draft was coming from that seems to have been an issue since we arrived here. The closet slide in my bedroom is blowing cold air like there are huge holes in the wall. The entire outer edge of the slide has a cold wind coming in whenever there is a gust outside. Explains why it was so cold up stairs last night. The slide is on the wind side. I thought closing it might help but it didn't do anything at all. So I've stuffed the offending areas with some blankets and towels which seems to have fixed the issue for now. I'll have to look at that as well when the weather gets a bit nicer. For now I'll just keep tucking the things around it when we are parked. 

The weather has of course been rainy all day but it's been a bit warmer, not nice by any means but a bit warmer. Hopefully by tomorrow the wind lets up and we can move ourselves down the road to Hamilton by afternoon. I'm looking forward to getting there, getting a new tire and having things put back together. We are also looking forward to seeing daughter/sister Bradey and her other half, David while we are in the area. Dinner Tuesday night with the two of them will give us a chance to get caught up.

I chatted with my dad twice today, we discussed the weather both here and there. They are still in the midst of a storm as well. He's quite a bit further north than we are but he says they've had it all, ice pellets, snow, sleet, freezing rain, rain, and when we talked the last time it was still snowing and of course the issue is the wind. Makes it very difficult to see with all the snow blowing around. 

I also chatted with my friend Linda, who lives a bit further north than my dad. She said they had just started getting some weather and they hadn't had much of any weather even though a lot of snow had been predicted. We chatted for about an hour, catching up on a few things. I'm looking forward to seeing her and her hubby Randy within the next month. We'll be making a stop close to their home on our way to our summer location at Dad's. 

Around 6 pm daughter Courtney called to say hello and we chatted about our upcoming visit at Buttercup Ridge. I'm looking forward to seeing her so  much, it's been a while since we've actually physically spent time together.  She and her hubby Matt will be coming out to spend a couple of days with us!! I'm very excited!

After that I finished the book I was reading, Sue Grafton, R is for Ricochet. A pretty good book, not quite the same as the other letters of the alphabet but I enjoyed it anyway. I'll start a new book tomorrow some time. 

The temperatures are hovering pretty steady I think a few degrees above freezing here in Tilbury and it appears that by tomorrow afternoon all of this nasty stuff should be behind us, the ice will hopefully have melted, and all things will be good from here on out. 

Again no pictures as it's just too slow to load them. I think there are so many folks on their phones and such here at the ONRoute that it's the reason every thing is so slow. When not many folks are around it's pretty fast. Riley spent some time inside the ONRoute building today during our tire changing experience so she was out of the cold  and reported that the building was running on back up generator power. She commented the lights flickered off and on a number of times as well. I know that parts of Manitoulin Island were also without power for some hours today, but not where my dad is located. Further to the north and west from his locale. However a cousin out the road called to ask my Dad and brother to come out to remove a tree that had fallen on the house. However it hadn't actually landed on the house, it had slide down the side of the of it. So no roof damage but some scraped up siding. Parts of Toronto were having trouble with flying ice as it blew off power lines, tree branches, etc. A few downed limbs were also evident in the area in which daughter Courtney lives.  Definitely not a nice weekend here in Ontario, pretty much any area you look at had nasty wet weather and strong NE winds. Winds will calm considerably over night at last look. 

So there you have it. A real eventful day in our little neck of the woods. Glad we were sitting still for it. I hope you've all had an excellent day, that you stayed warm, dry, and unharmed where ever you may be. Tomorrow will be a better day I'm certain. Thanks for stopping by, please feel free to leave a comment, I appreciate them all. If you don't wish to leave a comment, that is also just fine, I'm still happy you dropped by for a visit. 

Until next time.... take care, be safe, 

Deb