Well, this will teach me to trust the AccuWeather app.
I’m sitting in the sunshine at 2 pm, taking a break, and I see a few small drops of water on my phone. And my jacket sleeve. And my pants. I look up. The sun is shining. I check the app: 0% chance of precipitation all day. Sounds good to me; a few little drops, it’ll pass. An anomaly.
I’d already started to think about quitting for the day. I was just too tired to do another long-distance day. So I resumed walking while looking for an appropriate spot to camp. I put on my rain jacket as the anomalous drops increased in number and density. The sun disappeared behind clouds.
I spied a mound of broken concrete and rebar off to the side of Hwy 60 and headed across a grass field toward it.
And that’s when the downpour began!
So now I can say I’ve set my tent up in the dark and in the rain.
I did the best I could to avoid the problem of water getting into the tent by using tent pegs and stretching out the rain fly (as advised on YouTube). But I can see it’s not a perfect setup. Maybe I need to do some more research. Meanwhile, my clothes, the sleeping bag, and I are all dry and elevated on the inflated air mattress. My food is in a plastic bin, and I have all other supplies in the kart.
I listened to two interesting podcasts today. The first was a Terry Gross interview with David Grann, the author of “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI,” a book about the conspiracy and murders of members of the Osage Nation.
The second was a talk by the author of “The Everything Store” about Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
At the moment, in spite of the rain there’s no wind. It’s nice to be lying down and taking a restful afternoon off. It’s about as romantic as being alone in a tent in the Oklahoma rain can be.
14 miles today. I’ll be in a motel tomorrow night.
@ Highway 60, Oklahoma