If there is one thing that pisses me off it’s when my sleep is interrupted.
I gave up the thought of getting water for coffee, it was a effort to even walk against the wind to the water spigot. There was no way I could put my contact lenses in, there was so much dirt and dust flying through the air and into my eye balls behind my glasses. I couldn’t even imagine brushing my hair so I threw on a big bandana.
Last night as I lay in an incredibly comfortable tent in a super warm sleeping bag I felt like our brand new super fancy tent was going to go flying into the high sierras lake nearby! I knew we should have taken our bubble tent, that wouldn’t be going anywhere now would it!
I have never been in an area this windy ever in my life, let alone camped in it!
Our first two nights camping were awesome. Actually every moment of our five day sierras trip was epic until 12:30 last night when a horrible wretched wind whipped through the Silver Lake camp ground.
I have camped at Silver Lake many times and I always notice that it seems to be full of RVs and I’m the only individual tent camping.
Last night we learned why.
This tent camping experience was definitely glamping. We had a propane heater in the tent and the Teton sleeping pads we used were seriously more comfortable than the first two nights of the trip when we stayed at the Westin!
So last night when the wind began to howl and scream at midnight I was, quite literally, not a happy camper.
The forecast, when I had checked it before going to bed, had said breezy.
Sixty or seventy mile wind gusts do not qualify as breezy!
Our tent, which was brand new before this trip, felt like it was literally going to shake apart! I gave up completely on sleep at six a.m. as the sun rose and we noticed that our camp ground was almost empty. Our neighbors had gave up on sleep and left at three in the morning after their satellite digs went crashing to the pavement.
As I poked my head out of the tent I could feel that the high winds had pulled out most of our tent stakes. Before I crawled out of my some what safe sleeping bag and decided to face nature I heard a dog whimpering and told my boyfriend
” I think a small dog just flew by our tent!”
Outside the tent was not a safe place.
When a gust blew up I could not even walk, the gusts were just that strong and our tent was acting like a sail in the wind as we tried desperately to start the horrible chore of taking it down.
Silver Lake had been so beautiful and glorious the last few days, this was like a different world!
I gave up the thought of getting water for coffee, it was a effort to even walk against the wind to the water spigot. There was no way I could put my contact lenses in, there was so much dirt and dust flying through the air and into my eye balls behind my glasses. I couldn’t even imagine brushing my hair so I threw on a big bandana. As we forced ourselves to tear down camp in this terrible wind storm the wind was blowing so damn hard that the water was blowing off the lake and getting us wet. Yes, that was the closest thing to a shower we had.
I tried to help him take the tent down and one of the supporting legs slapped me on the back from a strong forty miles per hour gust. That hurt like a bitch but I just kind of sucked it up, we were just so desperate to pack camp and go to a restaurant in nearby Bishop for coffee and breakfast and to brush our teeth in their bathroom like the dirty hippies we felt like.
Comments
We slept in a rv in a windstorm. Ok we didnt sleep. You know on movies when people marry and drive off with tin cans behind their car? It sounded like that and, well, a windstorm and whistling all at once. All night. As the p.o.s. rv shook back and forth. Ot sucked.