Just In Case You Were Wondering

We have had LOTS of rain. So much rain that I was TRAPPED like a rat this morning! Unable to head to town for my 44 oz Diet Coke and lottery tickets. I got up early, too! I was ready to leave at 9:20 a.m.

Of course Hick showed up at 9:25. Hick the Doom-Cryer.

"You're not going to town. Not now, anyway. The little creek at the bottom of the hill is over."

Yet he had made it back home, you know. Across that little creek. A mere three minutes before he told me that. So selfless, our Hick. Making sure he was on the right side of the rising water to be by my side all day!

An hour and 40 minutes later, I was ready to risk it.

Here are a couple of old pictures to give you an idea how high the creeks are rising this time.

Remember when the NO PARKING signs were put down by the low-water bridge last September?

You can see how the bridge dips down. I think those striped markers are three feet high. There's supposed to be a white metal sign with markings that measure up to five feet, but it's always going missing.

Here is a picture from December 27, 2015, showing what we consider a pretty big flood of that creek. No going over it, that's for sure! The water is at least six feet over the bridge deck. It was right up to the dip you drive down to get on the bridge.

Well, today, for fun, Hick drove down that way before he went to town. He sent me a picture. That's why I was up early, after hearing my phone and going to the kitchen to get it off its charger to see if anything was wrong.

Today you can't even get close to the creek, because it's flowing up the road for about an eighth of a mile. Lucky for us, we have our own relatively new low-water bridge that allows us to cross that creek down by our mailbox.

Once I was almost to town, I saw that the maximum security prison is having drainage issues again out front. There is no creek there. Just a kind of a small sinkhole that seems to be an outlet for the water table in times of heavy rain. Picture courtesy of Hick. This puddle was halfway across the road when I went by.

My regular route required a turnaround by a car dealer, due to a flooded creek. I've only seen it flooded once in my life, and it was about a fourth as deep as it was today. No picture of that one. I was on the road, turning around.

My alternate route took me over the Big River (yes, that's its name, we're not real creative folk here in Backroads, our other main waterway being the Flat River) by the gun club. I wonder if anybody came to the range today, saw the water encroaching, and said, "Oh, SHOOT!" Heh, heh. Gun humor.

Out T-Hoe's passenger window, the water level on the trees might give you some idea of how high the Big River has risen. Let the record show that I WAS parked on the bridge, not floating down the river at the time.

Let the record further show that the homestead sits high and dry, tornado bait, upon a lofty knoll, with nary a concern when the water comes up. The basement is dry, I have a porch to walk around when the driveway is rained upon, and as long as the power stays on, all is right with Val's world.

Except for that leak in the kitchen ceiling, courtesy of Hick's cut-rate roofers (who may or may not have caused the disappearance of Poor Dumb Ann).