Tornado's and Raccoon's

Aren't they just adorable? I'm not really sure what the average American thinks about Raccoons, but we think they're just the cutest things. There have been 4 of these animals rummaging around outside our RV today. They are still there now, at 11.48pm, peering up at me through the fly screen, hoping for more food. The kids fed them some of our sugar and fat free kiddies biscuits. They just keep coming back for more and more. At first we sat quietly behind the screen dropping out the odd biscuit, but now they are used to us we can just chat away and move about, and they don't get scared and run away. It was great to see the look of delight on the kids faces as they made friends with the Raccoons. I'm hoping not to find 4 dead raccoons with large distended stomachs on the patio in the morning.

Well, today has been a stormy, rainy, miserable day, and there are warnings on the news of storms during the night in our area. We don't mind, as we've had so much sunshine. Today we took our second day at the Kennedy Space Centre (see post below). We watched an amazing 3D movie at the Imax there called 'Magnificent Desolation', which was narrated by Tom Hanks. It was a movie all about walking on the moon. At 40 minutes long, even Barney sat glued to the screen. If you ever get a chance to see it, I'd highly recommend it. In the early afternoon it was raining a fair bit and we'd had enough so we decided that I would head back to the RV and make some lunch while the kids played a bit longer in the Luna Park. It started raining really heavily on my way back to the RV and I arrived so wet I had to change my clothes. Then I started preparing the lunch, and noticed the wind had picked up a bit. Fifteen minutes later Dan and the kids burst into the RV, soaked to the skin, waffling about some announcement in the Space Centre. It turned out to be a Tornado warning announcement telling everyone to come inside, to safety. Of course, Dan couldn't leave me unaware in the RV, so they'd had to come meet me. We put the radio on and immediately heard weather warnings.... "severe storms and tornado's spotted in the Cocoa Beach, Merrit Island and Canaveral Coastline areas." And where were we? Right bang smack in the middle of Merrit Island and the Canaveral Coastline. By this time there was a lot of thunder and lightening, and a downpour of heavy rain. Now I was quite panicked, but tried to stay calm for the kids sake, but Annabelle was extremely scared. I told her that there was nothing to worry about, and hastily called Pat to ask what we should do. I had no idea whether we should head home, or go back into the Space Centre, or just sit it out. We don't have Tornado's in Ireland! Pat said she'd never been in that situation and wasn't sure what was best but told us to head home as the weather was ok there. As I put the phone down we noticed hundreds of birds all flying away from us at once! We knew that couldn't be good! Dan said "follow the birds!"

By the time we got the engine started and headed back onto the main road things seemed to have died down. But I noticed a large patch of trees that were all broken in two, and destroyed, which I'm pretty sure wasn't like that before (we'd driven up and down that stretch of roads a lot of times). When we stopped to get some groceries the man in the queue was telling everyone about the Tornado he had seen rip through the area. So it seems we came pretty damn close to it, even if we didn't actually see it. We were all more than scared, and all day on the radio have been warnings of Tornado's. Only a few days ago in another state 55 people were killed by a Tornado. The weather man on the radio warned "If you're in a mobile home or RV, get out and find a building, get into a bath tub, a closet, or under a table, and stay there until the danger has passed!"

On that note, I'm off to bed. We have a long drive to Georgia in the morning.