JellyStone Park

Our last few days of June were both fun and eventful. It started Wednesday night, June 27^th. The weeks had been very comfortable weather wise and we found a Groupon for a great deal at Jellystone, a camping spot we had been interesting in trying out. So since the weather was perfect for camping and we knew it was going to drastically change Friday to 100 degree plus humidity, we decided to pack up and enjoy our last few days of pleasant weather camping. Jared already had Friday off, so he took Thursday off as well and we packed up and left after work Wednesday.

We had so much fun at Jellystone. Thursday we cooked breakfast; eggs, bacon, and marshmallows (the kids just had to have a fire and you can’t have a camp fire without marshmallows). After we cleaned up we headed to the flag pole where we met Yogi and Boo for the pledge. Zachery saw them arriving from a far and shouted, “I love you Yogi” but once we were close, he wouldn’t go near them.

After the flag ceremony we played a little mini golf. Zachery and Savannah got a little board and played on the nearby beach while we finished up our game.

It was getting rather Hot at this point. So we headed back to camp, changed into our swimsuits and spent the rest of the day at the pool, splash park, and racing down the water slides. It was SO MUCH FUN! And since it was Thursday it wasn’t extremely crowed.

Once we were swimmed out, we roasted Hot Dogs and smore's the drove up to Natural Bridge. We had been there before, 3 years ago when we first moved to Virginia, but we hadn’t enjoyed it at night. Once it was completely dark, they lit up the bridge with different color lights and played a recorded narrative of the Creation.  Apparently this program was developed and has been ongoing since the 1900. It was very neat to sit in a crowd of people from all walks of life listening to the first chapter of Genesis accompanied by the beauty of one earth’s natural wonders.

On Friday we took down the tent and then enjoyed breakfast in the mess hall with Cindy Bear followed by another flag ceremony. It was getting pretty hot by now, so we hurried and cleaned up the rest of our camp site and played in the pool till noon.

After lunch we went back up to Natural Bridge cooled off with ice cream, enjoyed the Butterfly area, the toy museum, and cooled off again with a tour of the nearby cavern. We drove our non-AC van back home and crashed.

Once we were all rested and comfortable again, outside of the heat, we gathered around the TV. The kids wanted to sleep downstairs (I guess they weren’t finished camping) so we pulled out the sofa bad for them. Jared and I were about to retire to bed when the storm rolled in. I remembered that the windows in the car were rolled down so I went outside to roll them up. I excepted rain, because that is what I thought I heard against the windows. Turned out I was just hearing the wind blow. I saw lighteing in the distance, I can’t describe how erie it looked and felt outside. I quickly rolled up the windows and darted for the indoors. The lights began to flicker and the TV turned off. After a few rounds of flickering lights, we turned on the news. Sure enough an 80 mph wind storm was upon us.

We stayed up till 11 glued to the TV till the storm stopped. RJ was afraid of a tornado, but was soon quieted as the storm slowed down and was fast asleep an hour after it all started.

The morning brought with it some interesting details, that we were fortunate enough to  have escaped.