Wheatley camping
I had a good camping weekend at a place called Wheatley. It was a massive camping place close to Windsor. It took about two and a half hours to get there.
Now this is the final camping area we set up in. What you see here is the kitchen area. It was a very rainy and stormy event for the two nights we were there for. The first few hours were spent setting up and getting everything ready for the night. Within a few minutes of getting that tarp up that you see in the picture we had one hell of a storm, possibly the most scary storm I have been in so far. The tarp that is overhead possibly saved one or two of our lives. Shortly after we set up a massive storm front moved in from Lake Erie which is but a few minutes from where our site was located. As we were setting up the back section of that shelter with the tarps the wind really picked up, so much so I thought a tornado was about to hit us, but it wasn't a tornado, even though there were reports it could have produced one. Suddenly the sky turned black, and then the lightning started to kick in. We were all under the tarp at this time, inlcuding the two dogs. A sudden bright flash hit the campsite, and then the tarp comes falling down upon us. The lighting had hit a tree on our campsite and brought down a huge branch that must have weighed in at close to 100lbs, and the height it fell from was easily around 50 to 70 feet, so if that would have hit one of us, either we would have died or had some serious injury.
We naturally all made our way to the vehicles and made a run for Lake Erie to watch the storm pass, and to get away from those tall trees, just incase any happened to fall.
So as you can see to the left in the picture, it was dark, the tarp was down and the branch had broken into a good few parts. We returned after about 15 minutes to the site to let the storm pass. We watched it from Lake Erie as it past over. It was awesome to some degree, but I hate storms so I wasn't too at ease with watching the storm. The storm was still passing over us for the rest of the night, but it was mild and we had time to fix the tarp and basically sit under the tarp for the remainder of the night playing cards, having drinks and basically craving Tim Hortons coffee. We didn't get to sleep in the tent until around midnight, but I sure did sleep good that night.
The top photo is of the tarp that took the full force of part of the branch that hit it. The tarp is a strong material, and it was a double material so you can imagine the full force of the impact of the branch.
The next photo is of the heaviest part of the branch, with my foot as a guide to show you have big it was. That part of the branch alone must have weighed at least a good 20lbs.
The next photo is of the combined branch, but not all of it. The lighting made a clean break of the branch. You could also see the burn marks of where the lightning hit the branch, or went through it.
This bottom photo is of a tree that fell on the final second night of our camping, some two days after the big storm. Around 2am in the morning at the back of our tent we could hear this tree groaning as it slowly fell down. It is a massive tree, and believe me when I say this was a freaky experience to listen to. In a tent, a massive tree falling down, and you have no where to run in that short time.
That storm was truly a bad one. I don't want to go through another one of them. But camping comes with these problems sometimes.
