Fate. What is it? Should we believe in it? Can we change it?

We are full time RVers. This means that we travel the great country of the USA for job assignments. Our time in an area can be as short as one week to as long as three months. Our home is on wheels and is pulled by a big rig type truck. Perhaps you have seen us!

We were finishing up the job in Alabama and had been advised to head to the New Orleans area. We were thrilled that we would actually get to go to Mardi Gras; at least the last weekend.

The job site would be on the airport side of New Orleans so we checked out the RV Park recommendations. One such park was the SugarHill RV Park- it was large with about 100 sites, in the open and with all the amenities. Unfortunately it was full with no hopes of vacancies in time for our arrival. Nothing on that side of town was available.

So we checked out vacancies on the opposite side. Lady Luck was with us and we found a clean park. We were able to arrive late Friday afternoon. The weekend encompassed travels to the French Quarter. New Orleans was about 15 miles away.

Late Sunday afternoon the manager from SugarHill called to advise me that she had an opening. Now normally I would have said okay and advised the company of the need to switch and ask for funding for the new park.

Maybe I was having a bad hair day or something, but I thanked her and declined. I explained that we were settled in our site, had paid for the month and that I could check back closer to the month end on availability. Now remember this was Sunday, February 21, 2016.

It rained a little on Monday with the forecast for rain most of Tuesday. Let me tell you about rain in this area. It seems that when it starts it doesn't want to stop. The park manager told us that it could accumulate fast and unless he knocked on the door and told us to leave, that it would be okay.

Tuesday came in with a torrid of rain and driving winds. The weather radio was constantly alarming with every type of alert from rain to flash flooding to tornado watches.

The tornado hit the SugarHill RV Park Tuesday February 23, 2016 late afternoon. It flipped or destroyed most of the parks campers. News photos showed only three still standing. Three people were reported dead and close to thirty were transported to the hospitals. The surrounding area also had home damages but no reported loss of life.

As we watched the news, the damage, the rampage of nature; we could only think that it could have been us. We had been blessed by my stubbornness and refusal to move over there.

I never had reason to question or truly believe in fate or destiny or whatever we chose to call it.

I never believed in fate until that day. Now I absolutely do. What about you?