Saturday, June 13, 2009

Well I have no new pictures to upload.  We are still without power and now we are without water as well!!  Evidently the water pumping stations do not have enough power for enough water pressure and therefore – no water!!

I really must say having just gotten home from camping  a couple weeks ago we are somewhat prepared.  There is still water in the water tank for flushing the toilet in the camper.  We will sleep in the camper tonight – I don’t want to sleep in the house knowing I might wake up at 3 in the morning to make a trip to the bathroom only to have to go all the way outside to do it LOL.  No it will make more sense to sleep in the camper.

We did run to the store and got a bunch of gallon jugs of water and some smaller water bottles as well.  If it looks like it will be days before we get power back and water we can always get more water in the camper and we will be set.  We will take it each day as it comes.

The power company is out working on the lines, but there are still downed lines all over the place.  We will start our clean up tomorrow.  We got all the smaller branches up last night and took today off to go to Little Rock as planned to visit our daughter as we had not seen her since before we left for our trip on May 1st.  It was when we got home and I went to start supper that I found we had no water.

So it was back to town to get some drinking water and got pizza while we were there so I wouldn’t have to cook anything tonight.  Sure is great having a generator.  I hear at least one other generator near by but it seems most of our neighbors do not have one.  We actually have two as the motorhome has a generator and then we also have a small honda generator.  It isn’t large but we have the refrigerator/freezer going and we have the computers up, the tv, and a light in the living room.  No A/C and it is going to start getting hot this week – of course just when you don’t want it too.

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Yesterday shortly before 2 in the afternoon we had a severe thunderstorm with straight line winds.  I had been in the near by town 12 miles from our house getting some groceries and odds and ends shortly before the storm struck.  I thought I had enough time to get home so set out for home.  I didn’t get far before the storm struck about 15 minutes before the weather forecasters said it would – they need to fix that and get more accurate LOL – really they do a pretty good job.  I had to pull over into a parking lot in a small shopping center 4 miles from home as the rain and wind was so bad it was dangerous to stay on the road.  While I was in the parking lot I could see the wind picking up a metal carport that was by the hardware store.  Having no idea where the heck the wind was going to set this carport down at I decided to get out of that parking lot and continue on for home.

The rain started to clear up the closer I got to home.  But I had to turn back when I saw this -( photo on the left.)  Mike took this photo later in the afternoon.  When I saw it right below the hill in the photo where you can’t see there were more lines down across part of the road.  I had to turn around and take a long way home – trees were down everywhere.  One tree was blocking the road but I managed to get around an edge of it and made it home finally.  I thought for sure we would have house damage as there were so many trees down everywhere but our house came through it fine and so did the workshop and the camper!

We did loose a tree though and branches off of others.  The top right photo shows several branches that came off of a very large pine tree – the next photo on the right shows the top of a pine tree gone – the top in mangled up in a area below that is so full of brush that I couldn’t quite see the top of the tree!  The photo on the left is a maple tree that came down – it was kind of crowded where it was at so it was not a big loss.  This photo on the right are branches and the top of the sweet gum tree, as the top of the tree came off it took several of the lower branches off of it as well.

But we consider ourselves lucky after driving around the neighborhood and seeing all the tree damage at a house about a mile away from us.  Look at all the trees they lost in their front yard – it doesn’t look like the house was damaged – lucky for them.  This photo on the left is of that house and trees (not ours – this is about a mile east of us)

Our power is out and the road going into the nearest house was blocked off as of last night because of the downed power lines in the top photo.  We have not ventured out this morning to see if the road is open and will check that out later.  We do have a generator going to run the refrigerator and a few other things in the house and will continue to do that until the power comes back on.

Our neighbors lost a tree in the front yard.  We went over to speak to them discussing the storm damage last night.  Weird but the carport that I saw lifting up in the parking lot that I had pulled into to get off the road — that carport landed on their daughters car!  Sounds like it might have totalled the car.  I had know that our neighbor had a small shop in that shopping center but she had closed her business recently.  I had not known that her daughter had bought the business and opened under a different name and that is why her car was there.

I’m glad I left the parking lot when I did as I was very close to where that carport landed!

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