Pass or fail? Severe weather tests our meteorological skills
We had made it to the Great Plains, and that meant it was time to start being weather aware again. June had been a very active month for severe weather, and if last spring taught us anything, it was that the middle of the country gets no sleep this time of year and basically just runs on pure adrenaline for at least 5 months. June's weather predictions were looking scary, and we won't lie, we were a little worried. We thought we would be spending spring and summer out west, but instead we found ourselves back in tornado territory. At least it wasn't anything we hadn't experienced before. In fact, last year's Harvest Hosts Challenge gave us an unexpected skill: amateur meteorology. I've always loved weather, but that was my first real experience reading radars, analyzing data, and making my own observations and predictions. It was exhausting, but also a fun learning experience. Perhaps it would help us this time around.
Tornado posts!
Nicole Anderson
Nicole Anderson
And also pretty much all of the Harvest Hosts Challenge Series. Not kidding.
Our two days in Cheyenne, WY brought some thunderstorms, but nothing concerning. However, we heard that more storms were on their way and would be arriving the night after we left. Covering distance was a top priority. We needed to get far east of the storms and be able to have a good night's sleep before they'd catch up to us. We may watch storm chasers, but we were storm chasees!
We left Wyoming on Friday, June 13 with a "let's see how far we get" mentality. Getting across all of Nebraska would be a big reach, but stopping anywhere between the center and eastern parts of the state would put us well out of the storm zone.
We had been in dry air since February, and our bodies were not at all acclimated to the high humidity. Every time we stepped out of our vehicle, we felt like we were stepping into a big bowl of soup! This kind of weather would for sure fatigue us, and we also knew that boondocking would necessitate some serious generator time so we could run both ACs. This narrowed our choices on where to sleep; we either needed electric hookups or a spot that allowed us to run our generator. Once again, we had Harvest Hosts Challenge flashbacks, when a heatwave came in and we were stuck using up way more generator fuel than we intended. But what didn't kill us made us stronger, and this time, we knew how to handle it.
We found a Harvest Host in Kearney, NE, between North Platte and Lincoln. It was paved parking lot camping, but they allowed us to run our generator, which was good enough for us. Plus, after a long drive day, we were craving some low-pressure fun. Similar to Terry Bison Ranch, we didn't want to go anywhere, and so we parked ourselves right where the fun was. We parked at a bowling alley! But it was so much more than that. It was Big Apple Fun Center (feel free to pause to wonder about the name, because we certainly did). In addition to bowling, this place had arcade games, both indoor and outdoor go-karts, glow golf, a children's indoor playground, and a bar. We expected it to be like most fun centers, a continually-deteriorating sign of times before everyone preferred at-home video games and "meeting friends" through their screens. Instead, this place merged the old-fashioned with current technology. We don't know if this is a Nebraska thing or a Big Apple Fun Center thing, but it worked. We walked in to find state-of-the-art VR games, a 7D theater, and a pristine electric go-kart track. All the arcade games were in working order and there was a blend of the classic games like skeeball and modern like Halo. The bowling alleys were clean and had plush lounge seating that looked new. The scoring kiosks had all the latest upgrades we could want, including customizable themes and food and drink ordering.
The bowling alley was divided into two sections, one for ten pin and the other for duckpin. We had never played duckpin before, so we decided to give it a try. It's similar to candlepin, which is what I grew up with south of Boston. Each frame is 3 balls, and the balls are smaller and fit into the palm of your hand. With duckpin, though, the balls and pins are lighter weight, and the pins are shaped like, well, ducks. Bowling lane reservations were sold by the half-hour, and we booked a lane for an hour.
Duckpin bowling doesn't require bowling shoes because the balls weigh only about 4lb
Our first game was neck-and-neck!
But our second game, I was determined to break 100. 2 spares, a strike, and a few 10s later, I succeeded! I think my candlepin experienced helped, or maybe it was the delicious sustenance that was delivered to our lane.
Small ball bowling is notoriously more challenging than ten pin.
After bowling, we stuck around to play some arcade games and go on the 7D ride. We ended up spending close to 3 hours there and spent way more money than the suggested $30 to patronize our Harvest Host location! Such a great way to let off some steam and goof around before setting out for another travel day the next morning.
Something that would have made us hesitate to stay here was the "up to 30ft" length requirement on the Harvest Host listing. However, we noticed that the listing described a new parking area that was easy for rigs to maneuver, and some reviews stated rigs much larger than 30ft. I satellite and street viewed the parking lot and knew that, as long as it wasn't super crowded, we'd have no issues. We had plenty of space and were the only RVers staying there overnight. The fun center didn't close until 1am, but we were far enough away to barely hear any noise.
Saturday was another day of driving with no destination. Storms were coming through Nebraska and could reach as far as Des Moines, IA. Originally, we thought about staying somewhere near Des Moines, but we'd need to go further. It felt like a game of cat and mouse. As soon as we'd leave one location, the storms would erupt! We were proud of ourselves for avoiding them with such efficiency, but we couldn't keep overnighting forever. We'd have work the next week and needed to be settled somewhere to get projects done and take work calls. Our hope was to overnight in both Iowa and Minnesota, two states we hadn't yet checked off our "states RVed" list. In fact, I hadn't checked either of them off my individual list, either, and Anthony had only checked off Minnesota. We were about to hit some new milestones!
Unfortunately, milestones cannot be celebrated as easily when we're storm chasees. We thought we would hang our hats in Iowa for a while before heading to Minnesota, but after seeing the radars, we decided to change course and head north first. Another thing we learned during our Harvest Hosts Challenge was that overnighting actually worked in our favor a lot of the time, because we could choose where to go on a 24-hour forecast, and therefore, a more accurate forecast. But I was now looking for a stay that would get us through the work week, and even if the weather looked good for Saturday or Sunday, soon storms would roll in and the rest of the week was dicey. I must have stared at the map of Minnesota for nearly an hour before realizing that every place was at risk at some point, and we just had to choose what looked like the lesser of the evils. For us, that was staying towards the southern part of the state, where we could escape to other parts of the Midwest if needed.
Of course, we didn't want to just choose any old campground. It was my first time in Minnesota, so I wanted it to be nice. I booked us an electric site at Blue Mounds State Park, close to the borders of Iowa and South Dakota and only a few miles from I-90. It also looked to have sturdy bathhouses, a plus if a tornado warning happened. The forecast predicted on-and-off storms, with the worst coming Monday. But what drew us here was the nature, and the fact that the state park has fun features, like a mining site and a herd of bison. Yay, more bison! But we'd have to see about exploring the park. Not only was the weather looking stormy, but it was also going to be hot and humid. Yay for the electric hookup so we could run our ACs!
We had a problem, though. I was looking for a Saturday-Friday reservation, and only 1 site was available that would fit us, and it only had a 40ft max length. Our trailer would fit, but truck and trailer together would be iffy. If I waited until Sunday, I had a choice of tons of sites, including ones much longer. So I booked us a 60ft length from Sunday-Friday, which meant we'd need to find an overnight out of the storms for Saturday.
We left Big Apple and headed east on I-80, not making any decisions until we hit Omaha and needed to decide whether or not to keep east or turn north. I did some research while Anthony drove, and our best option looked like a casino 40 minutes south of Blue Mounds State Park, located in Iowa, but just 2.5 miles from the tristate marker of Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota.
Grand Falls Casino and Golf Resort has a Harvest Hosts listing, but it seems like the public can come and park in the lot, as many casinos allow. There is also a full-hookup RV park that runs about $40-55/night depending on the season, but boondocking in the parking lot is complementary. I found this casino to be a good choice for a few reasons:
- It was out of the bulk of the storms
- It had paved parking, so if we got downpours, we didn't need to worry about mushy, muddy ground
- We wouldn't have a check-out time, so we could stay as long as we needed before moving up to Blue Mounds, whose check-in time wasn't until 4pm
If someone mapped our drive against the weather, they'd think I was a meteorology genius. We drove through Omaha and straddled the Iowa-South Dakota border for a while, before deciding to take an extended break at the Vermillion Visitor Center in South Dakota. We used this time to have dinner and weren't in a rush because the storms weren't supposed to arrive for hours, weren't supposed to be as intense as further south, and we had plenty of daylight to get to the casino an hour away.
After feeling satisfied with our rest, we hopped back in the truck and proceeded to the casino. As soon as we got there, I checked the weather radar and saw this:
That line of storms was right over where we had just driven, and we must have missed it by mere minutes.
The storms came so close to us that we ended up getting the breeze and temperature drop from the outflow. Sustained winds were only about 20mph, but they were strong and cool enough for us to open our windows and get a wonderful cross-breeze. We didn't even need to run our AC! This was the best case scenario, for sure, reaping the benefits of the storm with no danger to us. Meteorology genius? Not so much. Just pure, ignorant luck.
We didn't spend much time in the casino because we wanted to keep our windows open, but we went in to check it out and to buy a few items at the gift shop to fulfill our patronage. The casino portion is on the smaller side, but there are shops and restaurants, a spa, a pool, the hotel, event rooms, and the golf course. The parking lot had designated spots for trucks and RVs, but when we got there, the other RVs had parked further from the trucks using those spots, so we decided to do the same. We even found a spot that was level left-to-right!
The RV park with views of the golf course
Before bed, I checked the forecast for the next day. Storms were predicted from 1-4PM, right around the time we'd be leaving to head to Blue Mounds. Luckily, we could stay as late as we needed, so we would just watch the radar and decide our best move when the time came.
We slept through the night before a storm woke us up around 7:30AM. This was not in the forecast when I had last checked, but it brought tons of thunder and a massive downpour. So glad we were parked on pavement!
Turns out, this was an isolated cell north of a line of thunderstorms moving through Sioux Center, not far from where the storm was the day before. We didn't need to wait long before we were in the clear.
The whole forecast had shifted with this storm, and now the weather was looking quiet for the afternoon. This was great news! We'd much rather have a morning storm and be free to leave at our desired time later.
Around 3:30PM, we started packing up for our 40-minute drive up to Blue Mounds. I checked the weather one last time to be diligent. Good thing, because the forecast shifted again! Storms were due to arrive between 4-5PM. We could either wait them out or leave right away and hopefully arrive to Blue Mounds before they got too bad. We chose the latter. When we left the casino parking lot, there were some cumulus clouds in the sky, but no storms were on the horizon yet. We couldn't believe how quickly this changed. Our RV GPS took us a roundabout way to I-90 (which we're not sure was necessary, but we think it was avoiding dirt roads, which we appreciate), which took us about 5 miles out of the way of the most direct route. During that time, the sky kept getting more and more ominous.
Left: Just a harmless cumulonimbus. Right: Oops, not so much!
To make matters worse, we were running low on gas. We had last gotten gas before Omaha and had plans to grab some soon after leaving the casino. Only, we were in the IowaSouthDakotaMinnesota boonies! Then when our RV GPS took us the long way into Minnesota, we grew a bit concerned. I noticed a couple of gas stations on the map a couple blocks outside our route, and we determined we'd be smart to check them out and see if we fit. Not only were they small, but they both looked closed! Another few miles wasted. We had no choice but to head to Luverne, the closest town center to Blue Mounds State Park. But the storm was forming in that very direction.
How did this even happen?! We were heading north. The storm was supposed to be coming from the west and was supposed to be heavier down in Iowa, where we just were. Now the shelf cloud was forming a straight line from east to west, north of us. We couldn't turn around because there were no gas stations that way. We couldn't take a shortcut because we didn't know the roads and a lot of them looked dirt, which would be a terrible idea when rain was about to pour down at any minute. I had lost all my meteorological mojo and was at a complete loss of what to do. We continued north, heading towards I-90 east, the highway that would take us into Luverne.
When the land is this flat, it's deceiving how far away storms are. I couldn't judge if we'd reach this shelf cloud before or after turning onto the interstate. Under the cloud looked like a complete lack of visibility, which we were sure included some serious winds and rain. As we drove north, we kept getting closer and closer. My adrenaline was pumping. Only 1.5mi until we reach the interstate, then 1, then .5, and finally, we turned east, mere feet from the edge of the storm.
Our days of successfully running away from the storms were over. They had finally caught up to us. And now that we were heading east, the same direction as the storm, we had no choice but to ride underneath its southern edge for the 6 miles of interstate. We needed to go slow in case of wind, and we crossed our fingers that we wouldn't get caught in the downpour. On this stretch, our low fuel alert came on. We felt like we had made some wrong decisions that brought us to this point, but thinking back, the decisions were impossible! We had very few options for gas and hadn't unhitched in days. The storm that we thought was coming between 4 and 5PM came early, and the most severe part of it formed further north than we expected. No matter what we chose, we would have gotten caught in the storm, but choosing to leave when we did put us towing in the storm instead of stationary. That was the least ideal situation, but that's where we were. All we could do from here was drive as carefully as possible, get to a gas station as soon as possible, and try our best to avoid whatever danger lurked in that massive shelf cloud.
To be continued.