It was late summer and early tornado season. But being far more concerned with our entertainment than our safety, we decided to pack the kids in the RV and head for the Smoky Mountains. Knowing we would only have a couple of days, we asked a few friends if they knew of a nice place that wasn’t all the way to the Blue Ridge Parkway. They told us about a little place near a creek that was only a few hours away. On Friday afternoon we hit the road.
It was our first trip in the RV and the kids thought it was cool that they could “camp” while driving. When we got there, it was already late. We knew RVs were allowed, but there was no power. We had a generator so that didn’t bother us. When we saw the site was pretty empty we thought it was the power outage and laughed at the “sissy” campers who had these cool RVs and couldn’t handle the power outage for a couple of days.
The kids had fallen asleep and my husband and I spent some quiet time sitting outside listening to the water run and looking at the stars, which are magical in that part of the country. We soon decided to get some sleep and told ourselves how smart we were to find such a great camping spot!
We open the windows to smell the mountain air and curl up in it for a good night’s sleep. We fell asleep quickly after the long drive.
At some point, just before dawn, a noise woke me up. It was a low thud. I stood there listening wondering what it was. Soon the noise got louder… and louder. I woke up my husband and told him to listen. It was very dark outside and we couldn’t see. There were no other RVs around us. We listened and the noise kept growing. Then my husband said, “Sounds like a train.” I said, “A train? How could it be a train?” Suddenly, the motorhome began to vibrate and then shake. The noise was deafening. I yelled, “A train! It’s a tornado!”
We panic. We had no idea where to run. We didn’t know the area at all. There was nothing around us. But each one grabbed a child and ran! We ran out of the RV. It was dark but my husband could make out a place where the earth and grass were higher than the rest, where he walked to get to the edge of the stream. He ran towards him and I was right behind him, each of us with a screaming child in our arms! We fell to the ground and pressed against the small wall of earth. Each of us had a child pressed against the wall and our bodies covering theirs. As we waited to be picked up and taken to the land of OZ, we noticed that the shaking had stopped and the noise had subsided. The sun was beginning to lighten the sky and we looked up. It was clear and there was no rain, no wind, and no tornado. Looking further, we saw that just a few feet from where we had parked our RV was a train track. The train passed every morning before dawn. Sound travels in the mountains and the noise was deafening. We realized that we just scared our kids to death into outrunning a train.
At that moment, an old man and his wife walked up, fishing poles in hand. They looked at us with wide eyes, then turned and walked the other way, shaking their heads. It wasn’t until then that we realized my husband was wearing nothing but tight pants. Me? (This was in the ’80s) He was wearing a scissor purple baby-doll nightgown, trimmed in fluorescent pink… that GLOW IN THE DARK!
We did not see the couple again, for which I am grateful. Honestly, she would die less in a tornado than in her presence!