August 13, 2008 Due to the weather, I decide to paint in Missouri on the way back and we push west into Kansas. We stop in Colby, Kansas at a little campground just off the interstate next to the Prairie Museum, home of the largest barn. The Bourquins also have a wonderful little restaurant where we enjoy a steak dinner and the best bread pudding I have ever had. We take along a loaf of homemade bread for the journey. The evening brings thunderstorm warnings and in the morning I paint a sunrise picture of a little barn & horse corral. We arrived in Denver in the afternoon where Roger met up with his daughter Cat for a camping trip in Colorado. I was in a hurry to move on because the skies were looking very dark and the forecast was for more severe storms. I headed NE towards Nebraska, trying to get north of the approaching system. Unfortunately I was little late. As I headed up 2 lane route 71 N with 50 miles to the Nebraska border, the weather band began issuing warnings of tornados, 2 inch hail and up to 70 mph gusts. Of course they issued them by county and I had no idea what county I was in. (Ignorance is not always bliss – sometimes it is just ignorance.) I began to panic as I passed one of the county signs they had just announced where people should be taking cover. Even my small RV seemed suddenly to be a very big target. The sky looked like Armageddon approaching but I got in line behind 2 horse trailers also fleeing north figuring I might follow them if they turned in at a farm. Really I had no options because there was nowhere to turn around and the strengthening storm was headed south. Tornado scenarios began to play out as I envisioned having to ditch the RV, find a culvert and hang onto the cat and my little dog too. (I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, but I was still pretty close.) The bad part about the geography in these storms is the RV slows down approaching hilltops and I was really trying to limit my time being the tallest metal object on the hill. As I crossed the border into Nebraska, the sky began to lighten and I pulled over and breathed at the I-80 intersection.
