Wind-ripped floodwater shimmied across the Short Stay Navy Outdoor Recreation Area.

Their camper rocking, the rain pounding sideways against it, Charlene and Mike Kapperman rode it out, in their bathing suits.

"It was little bit nerve wracking. It was awesome," Charlene Kapperman said.

"It went and went and went. It was a steady blow off that lake for six hours. This was just as good as a hurricane," said her husband. When Tropical Storm Gaston finally gave out a little, they pulled ponchos over the suits and went out to gape at the storming lake. They had never seen it so rough.

Waves churned up by that wind chopped into Short Stay in breakers taller than a man. Berkeley County Emergency Preparedness workers drove two high-wheeled trucks in to ferry some 30 vacationers stranded in lakeside condos. Campers flooded out. A tree fell across a car. One resident heaved a case of Budweiser into his pickup bed and joined the stream of trucks winding their way out through the streams.

"I kept looking at the TV pictures of crews out in the rain and wind on the barrier islands and I thought, 'This is worse. They ought to be here,'" Charlene Kapperman said.

The Kappermans, five-year residents of the campground, didn't flinch. They had a contingency plan --escape in their own pickup. Charlene was the one who had wanted to move to a camper at Short Stay. She wanted to live by the water. She wanted the adventure.

Mike Kapperman had seen worse. A retired Coast Guard Search and Rescue seaman, he had been in seas 20 and 30 feet high. Her "risky" husband, the one who drags her back on roller coasters again and again, was in his element.

This time.

"I know when a hurricane comes through I'm getting out of here," Charlene Kapperman said.

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