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| Our first effort at rain protection |
But not all the time. One must take the good -- out-of-doors experience, beautiful scenery, cool nighttime temperatures in the Smokies, communing with nature -- with the bad, which, when camping, usually means rain.
We arrived in the Smokies the Friday after July 4 to find that the park had been ravaged by a storm with thousands of trees downed by high winds and landslides caused by heavy rains. Two people had also been killed in the park due to the weather phenomenon.
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| Can you see the drips? |
It should have taken care of what was to come. We stretched our first tarp (with the assistance of my brother in law) and left the area for a while with our camper closed up and our two main chairs placed close to the camper and under the tarp.
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| Protecting cooking gear from the rain |
We arrived back to find the two chairs, which had fabric seats and backs, totally soaked.
I asked a passing camper if there had been a heavy wind with the rain. He indicated there wasn't. There had to be. Why would my chairs be so wet.
When the next precipitation showed itself, I came to realize the huge tarp was very weather worn and allowed a lot (thousands) of drips.
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| Raindrops settle on a leaf |
My neighbor campers must have enjoyed the show that followed. I put up another tarp under the original one and then took the original down. Another bit of precipitation revealed the second tarp was just as bad. A third tarp didn't help and I finally remembered there was a 10 by 30 foot piece of clear plastic that I had bought a number of years earlier.
I put it up and it worked just fine. A little bit of rain followed and we were well-protected.
The big question is -- is the plastic tarp OK enough to keep on using, or should I invest in another blue tarp?
Well, I've got at least another year to make that decision.
Next post: August 7, 2012
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