Memorial Day Memories

We ventured out to Fort Custer (near Battle Creek, Michigan) for our first camping trip of the season and Timmy's first camping trip ever. It's only about an hour and a half from home and we had heard that the mountain biking trails were fabulous.
We went with another family from church, the Kerns, and Hannah had a lot of fun playing with their boys.
On Saturday morning, one of our old friends from Grand Rapids came up for the day and met Caleb for a ride on the trails. They had a lot of fun riding through the woods in preparation for their Iceman race in Traverse City in November.
In the afternoon, we were able to go to Binder Park Zoo for the first time. They had a fantastic African exhibit.
You'd never know it by the picture below, but we were under a tornado watch for most of the afternoon on Sunday. We watched several campers pack up and high tail it outta there and wondered if we were nuts for sticking it out. Really, there was no where we could have driven to in Western Michigan to escape the storms anyways.
By about 5:00pm the sirens were blasting and we raced to the bathrooms for shelter. There was a tornado that had touched down in Vicksburg and heading our direction. I was pretty nervous in light of all of the other tornadoes that had been happening lately in the south. The Lord kept us safe and sound.

When we left the campground on Monday morning we realized the damage that had been done just 5 minutes from us. All of the power was out in downtown Battle Creek and there were several large trees that had been uprooted. It was shocking. Not one tree was down in the campground, but here, 5 minutes away, the damage was extensive.

We are thankful that God protected us and everyone in the campground. Although many campers' sites were flooded, no one was injured in the storm.