Fast Forward to the FLOOD

July 10-13, 2024                                                    Most Recent Posts:
Moose River Campground                                  The Fairbanks Museum
St Johnsbury, Vermont                                       Summer Solstice was HOT here too

I’m interrupting my chronological flow to jump to the present days.  Hurricane Beryl paid us a visit on Wednesday in the middle of the night.  The clean up and especially road repair is on going.   Here’s what it looked like.

My “backyard”  at 10am on Wednesday July 10.  River is seriously rising.  But this sort of thing happened last year.  No one was too concerned.

You can see a 30 second video of the river just beginning to over flow,

Here’s the campground road and Gracie parked in front of Winnona.   Things look fine.

And then the rain started up again – heavily.  The brown spots are ducks on the shore outside my dinette window.

The rain lightened up a bit.  I went outside and got pictures and this video of the mallards who were non plussed about the whole thing. 
The water had not gotten to my neighbors picnic table or firepit.  Luckily for them, they had left yesterday.   These are all the “early on” pictures for comparison.

The ducks of course thought this was fine for swimming and wading in the “shallows” up over the grass.  Not as much current.

Water is moving  up by 4 in the afternoon.  Notice the edge of Winnona on the right.

The neighbor’s site and picnic table by 6 pm.

My site by 7:30 pm

The rain stopped, the river started receding, everyone thought we’d be OK and then buckets of rain fell in the middle of the night.

Moving rigs off the river front at 3:30am

They are moving all the rigs but two, me and the one on the upside from me.
These are the two highest sites on the lower part of the campground.

At the moment, the water is only an inch or two deep under Winnona.  They thought I’d be fine but said they’d move me if I wanted to.  Moving is a lot of work especially packing up in the middle of the night.   So I elected to stay hoping I would not have to move.  By the time I decided, it was dawn and I could see my situation.

In the morning on Thursday the 12th it looked like this at about 9 am. The river is freely moving over its banks, through campsites and out to the road which it is washing away.

My neighbor’s site and the ones next to it had become a cut through for the river to the campground road.

I’m site 15, slightly higher than this one next to me.

Time for Gracie to move to higher ground.

Campground road, water pretty deep for Gracie.  Glad I moved her.

By late afternoon most of the sites further down from me were at the mercy of the river and the campground road was getting seriously washed out.

At 6:30 my mat was under water, not deep, but the river was washing the road out.  I could probably have stayed.  My site never became a river pass through, but I elected to move because if the road got worse and things changed, I might not be stranded.

They  moved me to the middle of the campground where the sites are long enough to double up.  I did not have electric or water there however.
Once I moved to this site in the middle of the campground, I was safe but muddy and the road was too deep to get any more good video of the river unfortunately.  I would have had to wade through the water and I’m not quite that dedicated.  I don’t carry rain boots.

Saturday the 13th, I moved again to this site even higher up with both water and electric.

Here was the view out my window as the road repairs continued in earnest. Luckily Gary is also the owner of an excavating company and has all the equipment he needs to repair what the river has done many times to the campground.
In the distance, you can see the white caps on this usually lazy river.

The road in front of the campsites under repair Saturday.  The only rig that did not move was a rental that Mary and Gary own.  It is in the site next to me.  They were more confident than I.    And they were right.

Mary had to call everyone booked to come in on Friday or Saturday and cancel and refund their money.  A serious financial blow given the costs of repairing the campground.

And still, the planned Mexican Potluck went on as scheduled Saturday night.
Of course less than half of the campground had to move.  Only a dozen sites were impacted.

Since I am parked so close, I got a shot of the decorated pavilion before every got here.  Notice Winnona beyond the Mexican flag banners

Some folks came really prepared with icy margaritas.  Ole!!

With the forced cancellations we didn’t have as many people but there was still a lot of food.    Though not one person attempted a Mexican dessert.

and today, I moved back to my original site 15.
An amazing job of road and site repair by Gary and the men who helped him.  As you can see from the larger rock, the road is not completely finished but enough that we can all get in and out.
The repairs continue.

Here is that same picture from the rear of Winnona taken an hour ago. 
Yes I was sitting out in my chair watching the river.
It still has white caps but the rock banks are more visible now.

You can see them in this final video of what the river looks like now.
Or at least until the next rain.

Next post, back to June as I try to continue my catch up.