...And that's why we gave it a shot.
This morning we started our day off, like usual, by having a meeting with Jason to talk about our plans for the day. I wanted to share some photos of our last few meetings that Travis took, but unfortunately the wi-fi here isn't up to par and it won't load my photos. I will try to share them tomorrow, I promise!
Now let's get to business, today was indubitably a long day for everyone. I'm positive that the amount of driving that was done has broke records for all of us. I know that I, personally, have never been in a car for that many miles before. Now, don't take this as a bad thing because it certainly is not. It gives our entire group some pretty awesome bonding time. If you want to learn a lot about someone just throw them in a van with each other and send them on a road trip.
Anyway, once again, I digress. This morning's meeting consisted of a lot of uncertainty of where we would ultimately end up, but we did know one thing, Mississippi was out. I believe this was the case because the amount of CIN that had to be over come to get CAPE values we needed to be worthy of producing storms was just not worth traveling for. This left us two options; go north into Kentucky, where the terrain is mostly hilly and not great for storm spotting, or go south to Alabama where there was a more robust CAPE value of around 500 J/kg. In the end we ultimately decided to make the 215 mile and 3 hour 31 minute drive to Huntsville, Alabama. Around 10:15 am we hit the road.
After seeing some storms start to organize to our southwest we decided to stop short of Huntsville in a little town called Tuscumbia, Alabama. Here we stopped for lunch at this little Mexican place called Fiesta Mexicana. This made Faith a very happy lady. She's been dying for Mexican. After we filled our bellies with some authentic Mexican cuisine we set up shop not to far down the road in a parking lot with a pretty decent view. And we waited.
While we waited we took some photos - artistic, group, and selfies. We played a few games. We talked. We witnessed, what I think, was most of our first roll cloud sighting. That sure was really cool! But most importantly we watched the radar and waited in anticipation for the first raindrop.
Waiting for the storm to approach is probably the most nerve wracking thing a storm spotter can experience. You kinda have all these emotions inside you just waiting to explode, and when you see the first strike of lightning, smell the rain-cooled air, see the coolest cloud, that kinda happens. You just explode with joy, excitement, or whatever it may be that you are feeling in that particular moment in time. We didn't get lightning or thunder like we had hoped, but that didn't mean we weren't excited. Oh were we excited! We just have all this energy built up inside of us and when the first rain drop fell and the stronger wind gusts came, we soaked up every bit of it. We stood in the rain and enjoyed it. We didn't get the big storm we were hoping for, but we got a storm, and that is something! We took a shot and got something, we were thrilled!
At the end of the day we made the journey to Little Rock, Arkansas. It was a 284 mile, 4 hour and 28 minute drive. During this drive John found dinner while Jake and I searched for hotels to spend the night. It was most definitely a group effort to make tonight happen. I really enjoy our group. When it really matters we band together and can get stuff done. Yeah, we can be a bit unfocused and indecisive at times because of how excited we all are to be out here living our dream (which I'm sure doesn't help Jason's cause) but when it really matters, we work together well and I feel that is really important.
In the end, we worked together to find dinner at a really happening bar and restaurant in downtown Little Rock called Big Whiskeys. After trying to find parking and then trying to figure out how to pay for the parking ( I've never seen parking paid for this way in my life, ever) we finally got to sit down and eat. We talked about music and our day's experiences and just spent some good 'ol fashioned bonding time together. I'll admit it, I was so tired by the time we sat down that I was awake and hyper so I probably talked a bunch (sorry guys). Jason and the crew was tired as well, but we still had fun and enjoyed our meals. By the way, if you're ever in downtown Little Rock and can figure out the parking, I suggest you try to find this place and eat here. It's really nice and the food was excellent.
After dinner we had a really interesting experience with one of the locals and then got on the road to get to our hotel. Now at this point the van is pretty much on E so we were sweating bullets and crossing our fingers that we had enough gas to make it to our destination, Days Inn, and find some gas. Lucky for us, Jake and I did a pretty decent job deciding on a hotel because there is a gas station right next door! Phew! Jason, you can stop sweating now!
So the plan of attack for tomorrow is to meet up with our commander-in-chief at 9:15 am to discuss our plans, get gas in the van (which is so conveniently located next door) and high tail it out of Arkansas.
Now that it is really late (3:22 am), I am in need of some much needed sleep. I will update again as soon as possible and share some pictures too!
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