The Mummy
Every year my husband and I go on a camping and duel sporting adventure with a couple of our closest friends, Ron and Annette. And every year during that trip we seem to endure some sort of extreme change in the weather. This year was no exception.
We usually go in August when the weather is so hot and dry that you can jump in a river with all your duel sporting gear on and be dry within ten minutes of getting out. However, every year we also deal with one or two extremely wet rides or days and run into some sort of freak change in the weather. We’ve ridden through hail storms with hail the size of baseballs, thunderstorms that would scare the pants off a normal human, rain storms that would drown a cow, and wind storms that would make a tornado seem like a nice, soft breeze. This year in particular was special, though. It delivered something quite different from the usual wet thunder and lightning storms.
We were out riding in the beautiful sunshine, enjoying the amazing scenery and each other’s company. It was hot as hot could be, and even the wind as we were riding was hot. We rode by Jordan Craters, which are craters formed by volcanic activity. The craters seemed so surreal as we rode up to them and examined them. It was so weird to think about the way they were formed and how long ago it happened. I wondered if anyone felt it when the asteroid crashed into the earth.
We also rode by humongous trees that looked like they belonged in a cartoon, with moss hanging down off of them like monkeys, dancing in the wind. We enjoyed so many other beautiful things, I can’t even begin to remember them all. My neck was cramping and getting tired and sore from looking around so much. I even stopped taking pictures because I was finding myself stopping every five minutes to get my phone out for something amazing. I decided I would just take pictures with my mind and hope I never forgot them.
We rode through a beautiful valley filled with small creek crossings, and just as we were coming out of the valley into more amazing rock formations, we looked up at the horizon in the distance and saw a sky that didn’t look very happy. The hot summer day had cooled almost instantly, and a gentle breeze started to pick up as we gazed at the ever-darkening sky. We could hear thunder in the distance. Then the lightning struck. It lit up the sky which was getting darker and darker by the second. As we watched in awe, we noticed that a very strange, dark object was moving closer and closer towards us at a very high rate of speed. In fact, it started moving so quickly, that we decided it was time to stop admiring it and try to find some shelter. At that point, we still weren’t aware of exactly what it was. We just assumed the sky was darkened with rain and rain clouds. Boy, were we wrong!
We hopped on the bikes and quickly turned around to head away from the storm. As we looked back over our shoulders to see if the storm was still giving chase, we noticed that it was moving at a higher rate of speed than we were, so we picked up the pace and rode as fast as we could until we found someone’s camp in the distance. At that point, we knew there was no outrunning the storm, so we decided to ride into this unknown camp and seek shelter under their popup shade.
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All four of us jumped off our bikes and ran for the popup shade. I noticed that their tent was wide open, and I didn’t think they’d want a soaking wet bed, so I decided to run in there and zip up all their windows. In the meantime, the storm drew closer and closer, threatening us with thunder, lightening, a torrential downpour, and sand. Yes, sand. If you’ve ever seen the movie “The Mummy,” you’ll know exactly what kind of sand we were looking at. It engulfed the entire sky to the point where it was all you could see. Everything was black.
That large black cloud of sand came at high speeds with the wind and rain. It looked and felt like it could swallow us whole, just like in the movie. The ground lit up everytime the lightning struck. It was the craziest thing we’d ever seen! Even though there was lightning and thunder coming right over the top of us, we grabbed onto that metal popup shade like our lives depended on it, praying the lightning didn’t find us and fry us to a crisp. It was hard to say which would’ve been worse at the time, being struck by lightning or being swallowed up by the sand mummy! We chose the latter and held on tight to the metal legs of that flimsy popup shade.
We watched in disbelief as the storm came over us, swallowing our bikes first, then us and the popup shade. The sand was so dense you couldn’t even see your hand in front of your face. The good thing about that storm is that it was moving at a very high rate of speed, and it came and went as if it were in a hurry to get somewhere else and swallow someone else up. The poor popup shade didn’t fare too well from the high speed winds or from us holding onto it for our lives, but I know without us holding it down, it would probably have been miles away, and those campers would never have known what happened.
After the sand storm blew over us, the skies opened up again into a beautiful sunny, dry day. Everything was wet and covered in sand, but if you hadn’t been there to see it happen, you may not have even believed it. It was as if nothing had ever happened. It felt exactly like the calm after the storm.
After enduring that crazy adventure, we really wanted to make t-shirts that said “We Survived The Mummy Sandstorm,” but we never did. It was something we’ll never forget, though. It wasn’t the only survival run we’ve been on, but it was one of the most memorable ones for sure!
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