The LBL Hike
Day Five

With the heavy rain during the night the nearby creek came up in a hurry, about 10 inches in two hours. We had a few drips in the shelter but nothing of any consequence. I turned on my weather radio and it talked of heavy weather in the afternoon with possible severe storms, including big hail and even tornadoes. We made the decision to start for the next shelter only 7 miles away. About 200 yards from the main trail we heard a large tree fall. It was close and it was loud. That told me something right there and I waited for Steve and his dad to catch up. I told them as much as I wanted to finish I felt like we should head back toward the main road and catch a ride to the truck. With what was coming there was too much of a danger of getting caught between two flooded streams or worse, having a tree land on us or getting hit by lightning. I had been in that situation before and it wasn't fun at all. We made the call to go back and found The Trace road. Once there we walked for more than a mile before a pickup truck stopped to give us a ride back to the north station nine miles away. This was a safety and common sense decision of staying in one piece. A few minutes later and we were back at the station.

But the story doesn't end here. The van Steve and his dad drove down broke a fan belt. They called a tow truck to come get it and it was taken to a nearby shop to get fixed. The sky cleared off and it got fairly warm. We probably could have made it to the next shelter with no problems but the skies were beginning to look a little unfriendly too. After a couple of hours the van was fixed and we were ready to go again. I did stop long enough at one of the fields to get some pictures of some of the buffalo that are kept at LBL. I really wanted to get a picture of an elk but that wouldn't happen today. I'd have to do that when we came back to finish the last 14 miles. I had to finish that before I got my t-shirt from there so I knew I would see the elk later.

Then things began to get really crazy with the weather. Towers started going up to the south and west. The conditions were about the made a drastic change as the storms started exploding. Tornado watches had already been issued. We reached I-24 and a large cell could be seen to the northwest. It had the structure of a large supercell and one that meant trouble. Rain began to pelt us as got on the Western Kentucky Parkway. When we got to the Pennyrile Parkway it got worse. A large supercell was moving from east to west a few miles ahead with continuous cloud to ground lightning. As we got closer strong rotation could be seen in the storm. The cell was becoming tornadic right in front of our eyes. When we were about a mile away I pulled to the side of the road to let it cross and Steve did the same. I looked for a funnel but could seen none and suspected it was surrounded by the rain. I grabbed for camera lenses and memory cards for my camera all the while. Still I never saw the funnel so we kept going. When we reached the place it had crossed there were lots of leaves on the highway but no real damage. Still the radio blared of warnings all over the area we were in.

We reached the Audobon Parkway and was going east and met up with the cell again. Warnings were out for the Owensboro area for the cell and this time I managed a few shots of the back side of the storm through my windshield. As we drove the by-pass around Owensboro I looked to the west and saw twin wall clouds over the city. One cloud broke up then another formed just north. the sky had become more than just violent with turbulence in the air and the lightning punching holes in the sky. To the north in Indiana the rain picked up to more light buckets falling on us. We decided to go ahead north to the interstate instead of following the river and putting ourselves in the path of the tornadic cell that had brought the wall clouds with it. On our path the rain became heavier and at Gentryville we had to pull for about 20 minutes because visibility had gone zero. Finally we were moving again but slowly, having to creep through runoffs in some place deeper than I was comfortable with. Even on the interstate we could only travel between 30 and 45 mph because of the rain and when we got passed by cars the spray made seeing impossible, forcing me to the right at least twice. That made me nervous as well with the runoff ditch on the side of the road almost to the point of over flowing. Finally we made it back to Crawford County where roads there were also flooded. At Carefree Steve went south and I went north. We both had to creep through deep water but we finally made it home. One thing is for certain. It was an adventure we all wouldn't forget. And we still have to go back. We've got those t-shirts to get.