Summer Fun-- with High Adventure Twist (Part Two)
I met Amanda at the bank of the river. Help was soon on its way. The smell of rain filled the black sky. Suddenly, darkness crept over and the winds whipped worse than before. The trees bent under the weight and leaves flew past us.
"Tornado warning," my best friend informed me as we banked the boat. Susan, the teen, and the livery employee was now with in sight. "Where are we going to go?"
I spotted the sight of the Sleep Inn on the other side of the river and pointed to it. We helped pull Susan to shore as the teens ran to the vans.
With all the teens on board, I announced that we would be going to the hotel to hold out during the storm. The brunt of the tornado was north of us-the direction we needed to go to get home, and we were not going to drive into it. Amanda was rolling her window down as I was putting the van into gear. The other van was having trouble. Large branches now blew past us and hail began to hit the vans in sickening little thunks. "What's going on?" she yelled. He yelled something in return and she replied, "Get them on here then! We have to go!"
Our thirteen-passenger van was filled tight as we pulled into the hotel. The teens unloaded quietly and was directed into a hallway by the friendly staff. The storm roared around us.
Soon the news came that the storm was hard in our hometown. Power was out. Hail lay in piles like snow, and the basement of the Y was flooded. The room that the child care center waited out the storm in had a couple inches of water on the floor. No one was hurt and the other group out on their field trip made it back safely. As soon as the city was letting people back on the roads, they would send someone out to help us fix the other van left at the canoe livery.
In his haste, the driver had put the key in upside-down and it was stuck fast. With some prying, it was worked loose. Two hours later than we were supposed to be home, we were on the road back to the Y. The rain still sputtered around us, but the wind was gone. Safely, we pulled into the Y amidst the aftermath of the worst storm in
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