Thursday: More Museums and some excitement

We had bought tickets to three museums, but only had time to visit two of them, so today we went to the third museum, the Old Railway Depot. Here we learned about how important the railways were to the war effort, for both sides in the Civil War. The Depot at Huntsville has remained virtually unchanged since 1850 when it was built. It shows the scars of when it was occupied by the Federal forces in 1862. It was never retaken, so meant that an important railway remained useless to the Confederate forces.
We returned to camp after lunch to do some laundry. The day had started out clear and blue, however the weather had deteriorated and it was now raining. We planned to move on the next day to Chattanooga, but had not booked a campsite, so when we had finished the laundry Sally had a rest and I took the computer and went a mile or two down the road to get a good signal (the mountain top is the first place where I could not get a signal from Verizon). Meanwhile the rain was getting heavier, so while I was stopped I thought it a good idea to check the local radio (I was actually was parked in the grounds of the radio station WAAS), only to find that they were in the middle of a special weather report. There was a weather front on the way, We were in a Tornado Watch Area! A tornado had touched down to the north (Meridianville) and another was touching down at a place called Big Cove and headed for Green Mountain (we were on Mont Sante), so I looked for these places on the GPS, only to find that they were actually about 2 miles to the south, uh oh! At that moment a siren went off, long and continuous, the sign for Tornado alert, the signal to find shelter. I scooted back up the hill to Sally, and sat in the car next to the trailer, checking exactly what was happening with the weather and waiting for the torrential rain to ease up. The ranger came round with his pick-up, blue and red lights blazing and using his loud speaker to warn us to go to the shower building as a tornado may be imminent. I then collected Sally, even in the rain, using poncho and umbrella we kept reasonably dry, though we both got wet feet as the truck was now standing in a three inch deep river of water carrying run off from the slope we were on.
We drove the truck to the shower building and took shelter there, with all the other campers, for about half an hour while the storm passed over us. The rain had been so loud drumming on the trailer roof that Sally had not been able to hear the Rangers warning. On our return to the trailer the water had been so fierce that it had shifted decorative logs that I could only just lift to move back into place. Interestingly, though the tornado had passed within a couple of miles, there was no appreciable wind where we were.
Our friends come to our trailer for the evening and we had a pot luck supper (mostly the Chile left from earlier in the week). An exciting afternoon. Now we know what to do when on a campsite when there is a Tornado warning!!!!