At the campground in Jordan, Minnesota

Jousting at the Renaissance Festival

After months of chemo and radiation, my sister’s hair started to grow back, she gained back a little weight and the only ill effect she still had was that her digestive tract, from the radiation, couldn’t tolerate raw vegetables. The bad memories of the trip to Minnesota the year before had faded, replaced by the good. We decided to try it again, taking Nick and Val with us. We even went for five days, camping in the KOA at Jordan, Minnesota.

There are a lot of things to do in that part of the Gopher state. We went to the Zoo one day and the Science Museum the next. Our friend Phyllis came up from Belle Plaine to visit us. It was all a lot of fun, but you must get tired of the boring details, so let me just jump right into the hurricane.

Hurricane in Minnesota? You are probably thinking. Darn right.

Friday night, Nick, Val and I were all cozy in our tent. Right next to us, Pat was snoozing in hers. It started raining, no big deal. Then the wind started. Then the horizontal rain started.
My tent was leaking. Nick woke up and I chased him into Pat’s Blazer. Val, however, just kept sleeping, and every time I pulled her sleeping bag out of the puddle of water in the center of the tent, she rolled herself right back into it.

Pat hollered from next door, “Are you guys ok?”

“Fine, just wet.”

“Ha, ha, ha. I am totally dry sitting on my air mattress. I told you you should get one.”

“Who knew that its tsunami season in Scott County Minnesota.”

The rain continued, pelting the side of the tents unrelentingly. Pat, floating on her air mattress, finally dozed off. Nick, high and dry in the SUV, surely was sound asleep. I spent the rest of the night wide awake, continuing to pull Val to high ground as best I could. I don’t know why I bothered; she obviously could sleep through anything.

In the morning, the sun greeted us as we crawled out of our hovels to view the devastation of the campground. Branches and small trees lay scattered like fall leaves, water covered the ground.

“Well, what do you think?” I asked Pat, who was still gloating over her dry bed.

“It looks like a beautiful day. Let’s hang everything up that we can and go to the Renaissance Festival.” And that’s exactly what we did.