Flood Update

It has stopped raining, but the streams are still flowing into the Whiteface faster than the river can take it away.  On Friday we wanted to spend some more time at the cabin, but were there only long enough to drop off some stuff and pick up a few things.  The lake level is higher as shown here

Those ducks just walked off the end, they didn't have to jump down at all.

The access road to the point is officially closed to protect a small wooden bridge and water is flowing across the road.  The fire hydrant (in the shady area on the right) is just off to the side of a bypass road that is under water:

Here is the bridge that we need to take the motorhome across in a few weeks:

I hope the water is down by the time we need to use it.

Storm of the Century

It has been raining a lot here in northern Minnesota the past week, so the ground has been pretty well saturated.  We were in Duluth for the day last Tuesday and left to return to the cabin at about 5:00 PM.  The sky looked really black and the evening weather program showed radar images where the storm cells were NOT moving.  It rained all night and into the morning.  Many weather records were broken before the skies cleared.  We didn’t get as much rain as they did back in Duluth but here is an indicator:

Here is a typical view of our beach and dock:

And here is a similar view, taken Thursday morning:

For those who like to play with numbers, the state considers this reservoir to cover 5600 acres.  How much water does it take to raise the surface by about 4 feet?

Wednesday many roads in and around Duluth were closed due to washouts and debris.  Thursday we came back to town and saw a lot of damage.  More information can be found at the local newspaper:

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/photogallery/id/2245/

 Joyce had a little setback this week.  On Monday night she took a tumble at home.  By Tuesday morning she was bruised and in pain so went to the hospital by ambulance.  We met her there and stayed with her at the hospital while she had multiple X-rays and exams.  Bottom line:  she didn’t break anything (sigh of relief!) but will be using the walker again until the soreness subsides.  She came home today and we’ll get her settled in before we return to the cabin tomorrow.

Time Flys When Having FUN

And what a lot of fun (work) we’ve had!

We should explain our lack of recent blogs.  Most of our family-followers already know this, but maybe not our non-family readers.  We have been spending most of our springtime at the family cabin, north of Duluth.  It is peaceful and quiet here most of the time.  It is a good way to get “away from it all”, but this also means being away from cell towers.  We post blogs quite often when traveling, but we usually have a good cell signal on the road and we have been using our own Mi-Fi system for almost a year.  The trouble is that our cabin is located in one of Verizon’s few “can’t hear us now” zones.  Their towers are at least 20 air-miles away: south – ½ way to Duluth, or NW on the Iron Range.  As a result, we are in a hole in their coverage, and well behind our usual blog reading as well as blog writing.

Some things we have completed:

- got the dock into the lake
- stained a new window frame (with many more left to do)
- painted the sauna and garage
- trimmed some branches
- did a little electrical work and
- mowed the grass (after we obtained a replacement lawn mower).

All of this has taken place between rainstorms.  Although this area had a mild winter and early spring, and the lake's level was very low when we arrived, we have had a lot of rain, seems like about 3 days per week.  The lake has come up, to about its highest level ever, about 2 weeks ago, but is now back down to a near normal level. 

For Memorial Day weekend we had both sons and all 4 granddaughters here with us.  Since then, we also had a whirlwind trip to Minneapolis early in June.  We attended a couple of family gatherings on that trip: a dinner and a couple of graduations.  It was Paige’s mother’s first trip to Minneapolis since Easter of 2011.  Joyce was concerned about whether she could navigate well enough with her cane but she did great.  She was glad that she made the trip!  She met her Great-Granddaughter, Leah, for the first time; here are all 4 generations:         

We were also able to attend Valentina’s graduation ceremony from middle school.  She’s now a full-fledged high schooler!!

On Friday, we will return to Duluth to meet up with Brett and a couple of the granddaughters.  He will be running in Grandma’s Marathon on Saturday and will come up to the lake for part of Saturday and Sunday.