June 02, 2015 - Another Deluge

We slept late. Spence was off and did not show up for his morning coffee. We met two young men in the campground parking lot who were loading up the car with their gear. The only tent left in the campground belonged to the couple with the purple raft. We took the path along the creek from Site 3. Some engineers had propped up a boulder in the side of the hill with large rocks.


The rains had raised Big Creek enough that there was water flowing over the rock bridge so I climbed down the bank to get a shot of the three waterfalls. They were between three and four feet high.

We paused at another spot to admire the cascade. That was our last stop because we were suddenly in a downpour and had not brought umbrellas or raincoats.

We hurried on back to Sao, but not before getting soaked through. Andy took a picture of me under the motorhome awning.

Our campsite was a river. I got an umbrella to cover the camera and walked around to determine where all the water was coming from.


From the front of Sao, it appeared to be the little drainage ditch across the road but, when I walked up to the ditch, I saw that the water was not overflowing there. The flow toward us began alongside the road in the tire tracks last weekend’s group site made off the edge of the gravel. Apparently, the rain was simply washing down the slope of the mountain.

The rain ended and the sun came out for a while. We walked back up to the bridge to see how much water was in Big Creek after the deluge.


It is always beautiful when the sun shines brightly after a rain. Water was flowing all across the rock ledge below the bridge and the waterfall was only about a foot high.

We saw Maintenance Linda in the parking lot and she said she would stop in for a cup of coffee. She said she had been told that kudzu is edible and borrowed my edible plants book to look it up. Kudzu was not listed and I can’t Google it.

I was making corn nuggets when Linda arrived. They are hush puppies with a can of creamed corn in the mix. They turned out well and Andy could not stop eating them. We ate more corn nuggets than beef stew for our dinner.

About 1600 we left for the grocery store to pick up whatever was on the list, but mostly to get out. The rain had continued most of the afternoon and we took advantage of a lull to get out of the motorhome for a while. We had a cup of Starbucks in the grocery store café and I made some phone calls. No contact with Son Christopher or Daughter Kathy. Daughter Jennifer was in the throes of cooking dinner with two small children making a huge racket in the background so we didn’t talk but a few seconds. I did get a long conversation with Brother Paul.

It started raining again on our way home. The truckers and everyone else on I-40 slowed down to 30-40 miles per hour. I thought about pulling over on the shoulder, but decided that someone might run over us in the invisibility.

We drove the car up to the tent campground when we got back from the grocery store since it was still raining. When we returned to the drive to our campsite, a car was parked in front of the gate (the one with the “Do Not Block Gate” sign on it). I put on the turn signal to give them the hint that we wanted to turn in. The people were standing next to the car, so Andy got out of the car and told them, “You can’t park here; you are blocking the gate”. The young woman newlywed responded, “It’s my car and I’m the customer and I can park it wherever I want”. Andy returned, “Well, I can call a ranger and he can discuss that with you”. I could hear her from inside the car, “Call the f---ing ranger and I’ll call the police!”  I guess she doesn’t realize that rangers are the police here. Andy turned to me, “Dinata, call the ranger.”  At that, the newlywed man told his bride to get back in the car and he drove away.

On the Radio

We heard discussion about a missing 13-year-old at the Midnight Hole as we were driving back from the grocery store. A few minutes later, 700 announced that the kid had been found. As Ranger Chuck (421) said, “It’s hard for someone to get lost in Big Creek”. At the Midnight Hole, there is the creek and the trail with steep mountainsides on both sides.

At 1850, a VP reported that a four-foot wall of water had just passed through the Chimneys picnic area. Others, elsewhere in the park and I presume downstream, were reporting water levels and warning people wading in the river.