WEDNESDAY MARCH 9th 2011 301533

What a night!   Torrential rain and very high winds for most of the night.  Then at 3.15 a.m. the thunderstorms started.  By 7.15 a.m. we didn't know if our little camper could survive these storms.  It felt as if the camper would be picked up in the wind and sent to places unknown.  No where to hide, and too wet to leave the shelter of our camper.  The rain got so heavy it actually began to seep in around the window area.  Nothing very bad,  just a lot of damp.  But still very disturbing.

Decided to have breakfast and get packed up ready to leave, if and when the weather allowed us to.   Kept up with all weather reports as best we could, via local radio and the scanner.  The campsite we had was about 10 minutes from Gulfport Airport, and a report from the local radio announced that at 7.20 am a Tornado had touched down at the airport.  Now that explains why it felt like our camper was about to be lifted up and carried away.

By 10 a.m. the weather had cleared a little so we headed out, while we could.  There were still weather warnings for tornadoes, flash floods and damaging winds, but we were driving out of it.  So we just hoped it would remain that way.

A 11.30 a.m. we got off the I-10 in Alabama.  We had been on this interstate all the way from Tucson.

It turned out to be an uneventful ride through Georgia, past some beautiful Georgia Mansions, all the way to Pine Mountain GA, about 6.30 p.m.

The weather was a big improvement to what we had experienced this morning.

This was the view from our camp site.  Roosevelt State Park at Pine Mountain was gorgeous.  We wished we could have stayed here for a few days.   This is a definite place to return to, when time permits.   We had a walk around before dinner.
Then spent a relaxing evening watching movies.  It was a fairly cool evening, but not at all scary  ,like it was this morning.

302097.