It’s 2:00 p.m. July 30 and the temperature outside is 46 degrees Fahrenheit. Eat your heart out New Orleans! Rain clouds moved in yesterday morning and have crouched over us for 30 hours. The forecast predicts tomorrow will see a return to our normal July weather pattern, meaning morning sun and afternoon thunderstorms.

Not surprisingly most of the tent campers have packed up and left. But here and there hardy souls in rain gear huddle around campfires, bravely struggling to keep them going. We were frequent tent campers when our kids were little. Our rule was: forget about the weather; if you go, you stay. We had a day just like this in Colorado back in ’91. We ventured outside only to cook, spending most of the day inside our old Suburban. I prepared scrambled eggs, canned corned beef hash, and skillet toast on a two-burner Coleman stove wearing a poncho to keep out the light but steady rain. We were so cold and hungry that meal lives on in our memories as one of the best ever.

By sundown I’d knocked back about six cups of coffee trying to stay warm and was suffering from an acute case of the shakes. Stephanie moved that we pack up and head back to Shreveport, but the motion died for lack of a second. Nobody wanted to take a cowboy bath in the creek. Being cold in late July is a real luxury, until you experience it.

Camp Dick has no internet or telephone service unless your laptop is old enough to tolerate IG coverage. But just one mile down the road lies a 5,000 square foot sweetspot that somehow, magically gets 4G LTE and three bars of Verizon CDMA service. That’s how we keep track of the world, and along with listening to the rain on our tin roof, that’s our amusement on these rainiest of days.

A travel trailer transmutes cold, nasty weather into comfort. When you step off from comfort it’s only a short stroll to fun. This is fun!

“Rainy day, dream away
Ah let the sun take a holiday
Flowers bathe an’ ah see the children play
Lay back and groove on a rainy day.”