It was the summer time and I had just got an old Nikon EM 35mm camera, I wanted to do nothing more but to take and develop beautiful photographs of my friends and all the exciting and stupid things we would be doing. So my friend Erik and I started to drive around in his beat up little car, we didn’t know where we were headed but we were happy just to be free. We left my house at 3 p.m. and started to drive towards Centerville to hang out with some of our friends, but little did we know that we would never get to see them that day.

We went through the back part of Centerville so I could take some photos of the scenery, between Erik and I being stupid and messing around we took a wrong turn and didn’t even notice, as we started to realize that were nowhere near the place we wanted to be we just decided to go with it and take a little road trip. While we were driving I got some great pictures of the sites we saw on our way. We were defiantly on the back roads, we saw a lot of tractors driving on the road which was weird to see, we finally got back on to a main road and as we were going down it we were shocked to see Kings Island right in front of us.

Erik and I both looked at each other with the same expressions and thoughts, we pulled off into a gas station and got some snacks, drinks, and a map because we didn’t have a gps, as we started to look at the map we realized we had awhile to go before we got home and as we looked up we saw the sky turning gray, Erik is terrified of storms so he started to freak out a bit. We left the gas station and started to get on the route we needed, as we were driving I was hanging out of the window with my camera taking a photo of the signal tower with the dark and ominous clouds above it, then I heard a sound I never wanted to hear, and that sound was the sound of tornado signals. Erik started to freak out and cussing a storm, we turned on the radio and the voice on the radio said “if you are in a car please find shelter immediately”, now this really got Erik scared.

We started searching for shelter, and at this time Erik was going about 90 mph in a 20 mph zone, so we were flying over every little curve and bump. We found a pets mart so we went inside and asked “if we could stay there for a bit” the lady that opened the door for us said that it fine for us to stay in there with all the workers and pets. Erik and I started to walk around and look at all the animals in the place, we got to the dogs and cats area and saw an employee who seem very upset about the storm, so I went up to her and asked if we could play with the dogs and cats to calm our nerves, she agreed and let us into a room where we could play with all the dogs and cats.

One of the ladies called Erik and I to the front of the store to look outside, what we saw proved to us that nature isn’t a force to mess with, we saw massive amounts of rain and hail coming from the sky and the wind was blowing like no other. We saw a lot of trees fall down, as well as light poles, we were amazed to see all of this happen right in front of us. One of the workers told us to head to the back of the store away from the windows; we followed her into the back where the dogs and cats are.

We stayed back there for a good two hours until the weather had cleared up, Erik was ecstatic to see the sun out and that we could finally leave. We said goodbye to the animals and the employees, and started to head back home. Erik and I talked about all the things we went through today, we were both thankful we didn’t die or hurt ourselves. When we finally made it back to my house after an hour of leaving the pets mart, when we got home we told my mom all about it, she couldn’t help but laugh and tell us that we would always remember this day. After eating and just being lazy Erik asked me if “I got any good photos of the storm”, I replied with “I wouldn’t know till I got the film developed”, I went out to the car to grab my camera and get the film out of it so we could go get the film developed, but to my surprise when I opened the camera tray to get the film out, I didn’t see any film in the camera, which made me quite mad, but I got over it and I told myself I would always have this memory.