It's raining, pouring and hailing

Good morning! It’s now daylight, pouring down rain and getting ready to hail (again) — not. kidding. I hear from the locals that this is not normal weather here so apparently it’s just my tent camping luck. It hailed a little last night with the storm, but nothing too terrible. Luckily the tent held up. Minimal water inside and no tears from the hail was good news for us. This weather is supposed to continue through the weekend — and we leave Monday.

TaLeiza and I decided we’re going to grab up a cabin tonight. It’s $40/night, but it’s better than sleeping in a tent that may or may not collapse in on you. The office doesn’t open until 8 a.m., however, so we’re sitting at Flying J down the road waiting until then. We brought our clothes and valuables so they wouldn’t get wet. The tent wasn’t wet inside as of this morning at 5:30 a.m. when we left, but who knows what it looks like now? When you wake up at 5 a.m. and your tent is bending in on you, it really is an “OMG!” moment.

I have the feeling we’ll be taking the tent down in the pouring rain, but if that means we don’t have to sleep in it so be it! I’m just ready for 8 a.m. to be here already. I will really try to keep you all updated on what’s going on, but my phone is roaming and has been since we got to South Dakota so I won’t be sending tweets from my phone. It’ll have to wait until I have internet access from my laptop.

Below is some video I took during the rain storm at the wee hours of this morning. Note: The screen is black throughout the whole video, but you can hear the rain. Other than that, it’s mostly audio of me talking about the storm.

And just for the record…this is the result of how it went:

Photo: The cabin we rented to replace our tent camping plans.  Click the image to see more from South Dakota.