You know how some evenings are so uneventful you can hear the cicadas yawning? That’s what we thought we were getting into in Big Spring, Texas.

We’d just wrapped a long day of driving through the scorched and sunbaked stretches of West Texas, with temperatures brushing 100 degrees and not a cloud in sight. The Airstream was parked. The jacks were down. I was in my pajamas, debating whether or not to make popcorn or just collapse. Life was good. Or so we thought.

Then… BZZZZZ BZZZZZ — our phones lit up like slot machines in Vegas.

Supercell Storm Alert. Extreme Winds. Torrential Rain. Tornado Watch. Giant hail up to 4 inches likely.

I blinked at the screen. Four inch-sized hail?! That’s not hail, that’s something between a golf ball and a small dinosaur egg. And suddenly I was no longer thinking about popcorn—I was having terrifying flashbacks to that storm in New Mexico four years ago. You know, the one that left our old Airstream looking like it lost a bar fight with a bag of marbles? Yeah. That one.

We looked at each other. Joel, ever the optimist, said, “Maybe it’ll miss us.”

I, ever the realist (read: professional worrier), said, “I’m not risking it, we’re leaving.”

Within 15 minutes, we were packed up, hitched, and rolling out—me still in my PJs, probably looking like a crazed escapee from a campground asylum, barking directions like a storm chaser’s sidekick on Red Bull.

The storm was coming in from the west, and we were booking it south like our aluminum lives depended on it. The sky lit up with forked lightning, and we could see the rain (and possibly hail?) streaking down in the distance like nature’s own version of a horror movie.

I kept yelling, “Go, go, go!” like Joel was in a Fast & Furious sequel: Airstream Drift.

It was a full-blown showdown: us vs. Mother Nature.

And miraculously, we won.

We ended up driving 120 miles (yes, at night, in the dark, through West Texas emptiness) until we reached a tiny town with a KOA campground—closed, of course. At that point it was pushing midnight, still hotter than a baked potato under a heat lamp, and we parked by the roadside, no hookups, no A/C, just two exhausted humans, two confused dogs, and a very sweaty, but safe trailer.

We didn’t sleep much. But we also didn’t have to explain to our insurance company why our roof looked like a sieve.

The next morning we pointed our scorched wheels toward New Mexico and Arizona, where the storms gave way to…wait for it…110-degree sunshine. Because Mother Nature apparently thinks we want to live on the sun.

But that’s life on the road, right? One night you’re peacefully watching Netflix in your pajamas, and the next you’re in a high-speed escape from hail the size of grapefruits.

At least we’ve got a good story—and an intact roof.