So Joe and I decided to go to Matagorda Bay this weekend to try a new park out and because we haven't been camping in weeks. We left on Friday knowing that storms were rolling into the Houston area, but we weren't too concerned because Radar the Weather Dog, said that the storms would stay well north of Matagorda. We do check these things out before we just drive off onto the sunset. We get there and set up camp, having a lovely Friday afternoon.

We got to bed around 10:00 and wake up around 3:00 am to the wind blowing pretty swiftly over the bay. If you have ever slept in a tent during a storm, then you understand what sleeping in our type of camper is like. It seems much bigger than it usually is. We have been through it all before, so we weren't too alarmed. As I'm drifting back into dreamland around 5:30, I hear Joe saying that it must be clearing up. I make some comment about it being the calm before the storm and fall asleep. I wake up around seven to the wind shaking the camper and notice that Joe is gone.

Daniel is awake by this time, so I get up to make his bottle. I look out the window and simultaneously turn on the TV. I notice the funny looking green sky in the horizon and look to the right of it and notice.... A waterspout blowing over the marsh behind us! Then I hear that Stupid Weather Dog on TV talking about the tornado sheer markers that have jut been spotted off of Matagorda Bay. The camper is shaking so badly that the beds are popping up. I try to open the front door, which at a point, is ripped out of my hand and slammed against the camper. Panic mode sets in.

Where is your daddy? I ask Daniel as he looks at me without an answer. I have this picture in my mind, of Joe being blown off the pier (holding his fishing pole of course) and swept out into the Gulf. Nobody is there to save him because nobody else would leave their camper in a storm like this. No sign of Joe anywhere, not on the pier or the beach. I go between daydreaming about how smart my Next Husband will be, to wondering how I'm going to manage to get both boys to the Suburban which has now become the safest place to be during a Tornado. I pick up Daniel to take him and buckle him in, Then I notice Joe walking down the river bank, hunched over from the wind, pulling the.........

....Kayak! Never in all my imaging's did I see him taking the Kayak out in what I remembered as a pretty good storm during our nighttime conversation. By then, I notice that the Tornado filled storm clouds have passed just to the west of us. In the meantime, My kayak has just sailed about 20 feet from its home on the top of the suburban.

Turns out he decided to go kayaking because it looked liked it had all passed over. Now, about this park, It is at the end of the Colorado River where it slams into the Gulf of Mexico. The kayaking in the river is pretty tame, unless there are forty mile an hours winds pushing you into the breaking waves of the Gulf. Joe says he's paddling along, (without a care in the world) when he notices that the air temp drops about 30 degrees cooler from the north wind (mixing with the warm south air=tornadoes!) . He also notices some other fools paddling really quickly (upstream, mind you) back to the shore. Cowards, he thinks, as he turns around and sees the same green, tornado filled sky about the same time I did. Then, and only then, mind you, he decides he should head back in. HMMM. Luckily, it isn't that far back to camp, but he was fighting the current And the wind, so it was quite a paddle. He paddled to the nearest shore and pulled it all the way back to camp. I am sure he was debating on whether to battle it out with the tornadoes when he saw the look on my face.

This, my friends, is why I believe in God. The rest of the weekend turned out beautifully. The mosquitos were really bad, but that is another story. Oh, where is Matt in all of this, you ask? In bed, asleep, the whole time. He wakes up and hears the rain gently pattering on top of the bed and says..... "It sounds like a storm outside."

Camping anyone?