Come Hell Or High Water

High water, anyway. 

A few weeks ago my aunt and uncle, Diana and Lane , were in town on their way to move several states away.  They’re the one who met online, like Nick and I did, which we owe at least partially to them.  And I have the coolest aunt in the world.   So, of course, we wanted to spend time with them while they were in town.

Unfortunately, Lane is allergic to cats.  He seems to be able to tolerate being at our house for a few hours during the winter.  Our house holds heat like an oven, so during the winter whenever we have a lot of people in the house the heat doesn’t run.  As you might imagine, the air conditioner runs non-stop when we have a lot of people in the house during the hot weather.  The air running seems to blow the cat dander around and really exacerbates Lane’s allergies.

So we opted to have a picnic at a park with them. 

The first plan was a park with grills and picnic tables, but no shelters.  But every time I checked the weather forecast the chance of rain went up.  So we opted for a different park, where we could reserve a covered picnic shelter, with a grill just outside the shelter.

Picnic day arrived overcast, but not rainy.  We took everything to the park, met up with Diana and Lane, and their dog, Ambra.  We set up the food and coolers in the shelter, and all went on a walk to take Ambra to explore the park.  It was windy and cool, but still not raining.

We started to think that it wasn’t going to rain after all, and lit the grill.  About the time we got the grill going a major storm broke loose.  The rain poured down in sheets, there was thunder and lighting, and it was extremely windy.  The basketball courts and part of the parking lot flooded.  At one point we were all huddled together in the middle of the shelter because the wind was blowing the rain into the shelter. 

The wind stopped before the rain did, so we were able to sit at one of the picnic tables and play Apples to Apples while we waited for the rain to stop. 

When the rain finally stopped we decided it was time to re-light the grill.  The grill was drenched and had all of the drowned charcoal from our first attempt in it.  Fortunately, though, Nick is a firefighter, and firefighters start the best fires.  We scraped all of the wet charcoal out of the grill, but the grill was still pretty wet.  I had packed an extra disposable baking pan at the last minute, so Nick put the charcoal in that, cut some vents, and got the grill going again.

Once the grill got going for the second time it started raining again.  It wasn’t the torrential downpour from earlier, but we were worried it might be enough to put out the grill.  So we all took turns standing over the grill with umbrellas.

It was definitely a group effort to get the burgers grilled.

I promise I did take a turn holding an umbrella.  I just didn’t take pictures of myself.

The burgers were delicious, and we all had a great time.  Nothing stands in the way when our families plan a picnic.  

We’re pretty sure the picnic is going to become one of those family stories that get told over and over again.  

So what about you?  Have you grilled out in the rain?