Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Snakes and Storms

We drove to Amarillo on Monday, spending an uneventful night there before moving on to Woodward, OK. It was there that we saw our first live rattlesnake in the wild, so to speak.

Bob was just returning from a walk with Auggie when he almost stumbled across it in the dark. Yikes! I must say, I don't mind snakes in general (and kept them as pets as a child) but I don't like rattlesnakes. We both had the heebeejeebies when we realized there was at least one right outside our door.

Bob and I went to bed thinking about snakes, but were woken up around midnight by heavy rains and high winds with hail. The rains would hit full-force, then slack off before returning an hour later. Neither of us got much sleep, worrying about the tornados that were possibly forming in the area.

On Wednesday morning we left Oklahoma and drove north into Kansas. We had a lot of strong winds along the way which made Bob's job of driving that much harder. We passed through the town of Greensburg, KS which was decimated in 2007 by a category EF5 tornado which wiped out 95% of the town and killed 11 people. We drove through areas that had been ravaged by prairie fires. Nature can be cruel in this region.

But the prairie is also a place of beauty. If only there weren't all those clouds in the sky, that is. We may be in for more rain tonight.

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