Rain, Rain, Go Away

Our trip to the DC area had been planned out for months.  Months.  One of NB and K's teachers had told us about a book festival on September 24th, downtown.  She told us this in April.  APRIL!  So we planned.  We reserved.  We told people.  We did not check the weather.  We arrived in Reston, VA, on September 23rd.  Bright, sunny, hotter than I wanted (still 90 degrees after the sun went down).  Tired and cranky, and hearing that Obama would be out and about in DC on the 24th, we decided to bail on the book festival.  We've been told that was a good decision.  The weekend was gorgeous.  We had dinner with friends on Saturday, visited my brother on Sunday.  Gorgeous weather.  Monday we had dinner with those same friends, and it was raining when we left their house.  Tuesday was beautiful again, but the area was put under flash flood watch.  Tuesday night rained hard, off and on.  My sleeping bag got wet at the bottom, but everyone else seemed fine.  Wednesday rained hard all day long, and the night was no different.  This time, the entire tent got wet inside.  Bill's and my bed took the hardest hit.  We're using a foam memory pad, and it got soaked.  With standing water in the tent, our reservation up, and no reservation at Shenandoah, which was our next stop, and no end in sight to the rain, we had to change plans.  So back to Bill's parents we went to regroup and dry out.  

Bill packing up all the wet stuff.  After getting all the pads and sleeping bags out of the tent, we then had to soak up the standing water so that we could get it all in the trailer.  Bill even dumped water out of the tent.  Blech.              

The rain continued on our trip to WV.  It was a bad couple of days, days that made us long for a house and possibly a fireplace.  But we got to the other side of that, got our sleeping bags to a dryer, cleaned out the car, did laundry, and now we are in better spirits.