WINTER GETAWAY 2026 - Big Storms Again at Pat Mayse Lake, TX

We are enjoying this section of North East Texas. We are at Pat Mayse Corps of Engineers Park in the Northeast section of Texas near Arthur City. We have a lakeside site here for seven days.

Sadly, we woke up to cloudy gray skies and impending storms. There was a whole swath of dangerous storms that were streaming right across the entire US. We were at the very bottom edge where it was dragging across Northern Texas and Oklahoma. And we were directly in its path!!!

In the morning it wasn't too bad, although it was cloudy. I got some editing done from my little "office" in the front cockpit of the motorhome.  I like having my laptop set up at this space, and using my passenger seat as my office chair. Everything can stay out of the way if I am unloading cameras or charging up equipment.

We watched the clouds roll in all afternoon. We weren't sure if it was going to go around us or if we were in it's direct path.

The skies darkened and we were due to get hit around 5:00 p.m. with the first wave...

This was not looking too good for us.

(we are at the tip of the red arrow,

that is what was going to hit us at 2:00 a.m.)

The wind started blasting around us, and we were getting lambasted directly broadside from the winds across the lake. We were worried about the trees overhead crashing down on us in the RV as we slept.

Nick was curled up with his little reindeer toy. He was very nervous, while we were anxiously watching the storm on the Weather Channel on tv. We also tuned into Ryan Hall on YouTube to track it's progress.

There were tornado warnings in both of the counties near us and we were next in line. We had both of our phones set to loud volume in case the alarms went off from our weather apps.

About 1:00 a.m. we looked at the weather maps and it looked even worse. It was time to break camp...

We pulled up our leveler jacks and pulled in the slides. In just a few minutes we were ready to go. By quarter after 1:00, we were leaving our campsite along the shore and driving up to an open area next to the concrete shower house / bathrooms. The open space was actually the RV dump station!!!

This was all done in the dark, but I do have some of it on the video link down below at the end of this blog. We pulled in and got settled for the night. Although it was still windy, at least we were in a protected area. If the danger alarms went off on our phones notifying us of an impending tornado, we had the concrete shower building to rush into for protection.

We managed to get a couple more hours of sleep, and the storms roared overhead. By morning, things looked pretty good again!

This was a great place to hunker down overnight, we were safe and secure, as well as out from underneath any trees that could have fallen on us. We were so thankful to have this place to retreat to.

Steve said as long as we were here, we might as well dump our holding tanks. LOL. So we did just that.

By 8:30 a.m., we pulled back down into our campsite and we were all set back up again. Just in time to start making breakfast and have a cup of coffee. The day was absolutely beautiful!!!

We spoke to the host, he said he didn't hear a thing and they slept all night long. He never knew we left and never knew we came back. 

We decided to have a fruity breakfast of bananas, yogurt and granola, topped off with fresh blueberries!

Yummmmmmmm

Although it was still quite breezy, we were able to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. The world looked entirely different during the daytime hours, not nearly as scary and threatening as it was overnight.

One of Steve's inventions that I wanted to mention, was his de-flapping solution for the sides of our roll out and retractable slide toppers. They are like little awnings that protect the top portion of our slides when extended. But because they are retractable, they flap in the wind and loosen up and make a lot of noise. Also, we don't want them flapping around so much in the wind that they rip or tear. 

My ingenious husband figured out to take a thicker version pool noodle and cut a long slice entirely down one side.  Depending on how high your slide toppers are situated above your slide roof, that determines what size pool noodle to buy. We found for ours, the thicker ones were better.

Steve gets up on his step ladder and carefully threads the slit edge of the pool noodle over the edge of the fabric of the slide material. This holds it rigid so it does not flop in the breeze or tear the fabric.

He has it cut the exact length needed for the depth of our slide. That way the wind doesn't get underneath it on one edge and still tear the fabric.

What a great idea for peace of mind, and to protect our investment in the middle of a windstorm. It sure would be a hassle to try and pull in a slide with a ruined topper and have to find a dealership to try to replace it while on the road. 

We are always very careful to make sure that it is removed before we pull the bedroom slide back in again.

That evening, we were treated to the most beautiful full moon, rising up over the water. 

I just love the sparkles on the surface of the waves. Everything was calm --- we really couldn't believe the night before there was such a terrifying storm.

I got out my big camera and was able to zoom in for a close up...

The next morning, we woke up and took a glance at our phones. Rut roh!  We were due for MORE storms to roll in. These were going to be even stronger than the ones before. Yep, we are the red arrow. These storms were even predicting 6-inch hail and high winds again.

Although things looked sunny and nice, we decided we were going to move to another campsite within the park. Up over the hill and more secluded, but without too many trees around us or overhead.  We might as well get moved now before things get worse. We were the only ones in this entire section of the campground, besides the host. We talked to him about it and he said there was no problem with moving sites, and he would let the park ranger know on the reservation system. Like I said, there was nobody else there, so we could pick out the best one for our needs. Selecting the direction that the motorhome would face is the most important factor in choosing a new site.

We could now position the motorhome with the nose towards the direction of the wind. Motorhomes are made to drive 50, 60, 70 miles an hour so it can handle winds coming directly at it. It's the side winds that worry us that could push us over. 

It was a very nice site, and down to our left we could see this nice shallow cove. The host told us there were beavers in there. A mom with little beaver pups had been seen swimming around the last few days.  

The wind started picking up, and we hunkered down for the night. We played a few rounds of cribbage and kept the weather channel tuned in on our Starlink.  

We got this beautiful copper wax melt decanter from Steve's sister for christmas. It looks absolutely lovely in the evening. Look at the shadows that it reflects onto other surfaces. What a great addition in the camper. Thank you again, Wendy! It sure is beautiful.

We made it through another horrible stormy night. We were secure enough in our campsite with the nose facing the wind. We didn't need to move back up to the dump station. The storms passed over and some of them actually went around us. So it wasn't as bad as two nights before.  But there had been heavy heavy rain for hours on end. Everything was quite wet and damp in the morning.

We heard a few slap slap sounds, and looked out and managed to see Mama Beaver swimming around. We didn't see any of the pups, but we knew she was there. She would poke up her head every now and then and look around. I think she was busy gathering breakfast for her babies.

The mists floated up over the surface of the water because it was warmer than the air temperature. A cold front had come in and the temperatures had dropped quickly overnight.  I think we went from '80s down to the low 40s.

Here was Mama Beaver floating around to the right of the trunk. I didn't have my big camera at hand quick enough to zoom in close.

It was still pretty breezy in the morning and quite cold. We decided to not go back down to our campsite on the lakeshore for the last night of our reservation. We decided to just stay right where we were. 

It was breezy enough that I was able to wash up some laundry in the portable washing machine that we carry along in the shower stall. I talked about that in the previous blog or two. It sure is handy to be able to do our own laundry and not have to go seek out a grubby laundromat in some little town. I hate to waste a couple hours sitting and waiting for clothing to wash or dry at a laundromat. It's much nicer to be in our own campsite and enjoy our camping time.

Plus, everything smells so much better when dried out on the line. 

The other benefit of having tons of rain overnight is that it helped with the drought conditions in this area. There had been fire bans on since we had first come down into this section of Texas. Things were so dangerously dry...  Now we were seeing fresh green growth and even these little teeny flowers appeared to sprout up overnight from nowhere.

We had gathered up a few pieces of firewood, just in case they lifted the fire ban on the area after the rainfall. This one was very beautiful. I love nature's artistry... 

Although it was breezy and cool, we sat out in our lawn chairs and enjoyed the afternoon. Felt good to be outside after being cooped up with the cold weather and the wind.  We did a little bit of a walk with Nick, and then came back to our lawn chairs again. It was so peaceful and quiet. The host had left and there was nobody around us anywhere. Except Mama Beaver every now and then going "slap" on the water.

We want to enjoy our last night here at Pat Mayse Lake, because we know the next morning we would be moving on.  We are so thankful we made it through these two bands of storms. I know people around us and to the North had horrible weather.  Little did we know that the next hunk of weather coming through would be stretching all the way from Texas to Michigan in destroy places with tornadoes all along the way. The worst is yet to come...

Here is the YouTube that goes along with today's blog post: 

1,249 mi traveled so far