The Great Deluge

Well, in my last post I mentioned that five of us were going to go down to the Hickory Ridge fire tower area of Hoosier National forest for a ride and camping on Saturday evening (3/11). Well, the impending doom of the wet weather forecast frightened off all but the bravest (or most stupid) of us. Charles and I forged ahead with the journey despite weather forecasts of rain, rain, and more rain. Charles had arrived in the afternoon, and he already had camp set up when I got there at about 8:30 p.m. I had checked the weather for the Norman, IN area, and I noticed that there was going to be a 3-4 hour "hole" of dry weather from about 9 p.m. until midnight. When I arrived I convinced the reluctant (and somewhat tipsy) Charles that we should ride immediately instead of in the morning as originally planned. We got our gear and bikes ready to roll, and we headed out from our campsite near the fire tower and we headed west on Tower Ridge Road. There were beatiful, ominous-looking clouds above that zipped past the nearly-full moon. The light from the moon was so plentiful despite the clouds that we rarely used our lights. We rode west on Tower Ridge Road until we could hear cars on 446. We stopped for a bit and decided to head back. We heard the grumble of thunder off into the distance. We also began to see lightning light the sky. We hot-footed it back east on Tower Ridge to the campsite. We weren't back more than 10 or 15 minutes when it began to rain. We were dry underneath Chuck's EZup tent. We had an amazing dinner of beer brats, potatoes, and grilled green pepper and onion. We also each had a 22 oz. Fat Tire. Sidenote: They are now selling Fat Tire Ale in Chicago! It rained very steadily all night long. In the morning the campsite had several inches of standing water all over it. It stopped raining and the sun came out just as I left for home at about 9 a.m. I barely made it out of the area due to the extremely high water conditions and flash flooding everywhere. The water in Salt Creek was almost touching the bottom of the Maumee Bridge. It is usually 20-25 feet below that level. I had to turn around or detour on Houston Road, Christianburg Road, and also on 135 because of high water levels. What an adventure!