Last Monday while in Cape Hatteras I had to decide how to go home. In order to avoid Hurricane Michael I went west, intending to go through Asheville, then into Tennessee and down through Alabama, hoping to avoid the storm.
This didn't work. I stayed Monday night at the East Asheville KOA in Swannanoa, NC. It's a really nice park with the Swannanoa River running through it, so the next day I signed up for two more nights. My campsite was on the river bank.
By Wednesday rain was making the river swell; it made me nervous. The staff told me that if their bridge flooded they would open a gate at the rear of the property so we could exit. By sundown I was concerned enough that I hitched up the trailer and moved it several feet away from the river bank. Then I could leave at a moment's notice.
Thursday at 5:00 a.m. I walked down to the bridge in the dark and saw that water was starting to flow over it. I moved my trailer up a hill on a road that pointed toward the rear of the campground then waited for daylight. By dawn the river was well over the bridge and my old campsite was flooding.
It was time to leave. My remaining obstacle was a small pond that had formed between my trailer and the back gate, which had been opened. But it was still water, not flowing, so I splashed my way through it and the gate, with the theme from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" playing in my head. I escaped!
So Tropical Storm Michael nearly got me after all, with heavy flooding in western North Carolina. I arrived home this morning and everything is fine here. But the counties to the east of mine were really hard hit from the hurricane, as we all know. This was a bad one.
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