13 June, 2011 2 comments Leave a comment

After our hike around Devils Tower we drove back to the campground for supper. While our potatoes were baking in the BBQ and our pork tenderloin was marinating, I took some photos of the dramatic cloud formations behind the mountain. Thunder and lightning filled the sky.

Thunderstorm over Devils Tower.

The clouds moved very fast in our direction and a few seconds after I took this photo, we ran for the shelter of our trailer because the hail started coming down and fierce winds and rain ripped through the campground. For about five minutes, horizontal rain plastered our trailer and truck with 1 cm hail and cottonwood leaves.

View out of our back window during the storm.

Remember I said we camped under a big shade tree? Not such a good thing during a severe thunderstorm! We heard a couple of big bangs on the trailer roof and could see branches on the ground. When the storm passed we went outside to assess the damage.

Our truck was so plastered with leaves that John said he had enough cammoflage to go hunting now!

I took this photo standing at the front of our trailer looking out onto the campground street. Note all the water and branches on the road. You can see the hood of our truck bottom right, plastered with leaves.

This big branch was lying behind our trailer and there is another one the same size lying on our roof. John climbed up on the roof, threw the branch to the ground and found no roof damage. Whew!

The storm quickly passed, the sun came out and we cleared all the branches from around our trailer into a big pile. Then we finished cooking supper and enjoyed a delicious dinner, but we did have to eat inside as the picnic table was very soggy...

After supper we took a walk around the campground and saw a half dozen large trees had fallen during the storm. Fortunately no trailers were hit and no-one was hurt.

Each evening the KOA campground shows the movie 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' in their outdoor theatre. This is the space alien movie that was filmed at Devils Tower back in the 1970's. We dressed warmly, took our lawn chairs and snacks to the outdoor deck and really enjoyed seeing the movie again on a big flatscreen TV, especially after touring the mountain earlier in the day. A very memorable day!

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