Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Dancing Along the River

   What a Spring we've had!  Friends in Evanston kept telling us they'd had more snow in May than they'd had all winter, and that's not what we wanted to hear.  We originally hoped to be in the forest around May 10th and finally made it on May 26th, just before Memorial Day, when we had more snpw and cold weather.  It made it easy to get away for the 5th, 8th, and high school graduations of Robert's children.  Cory, Robert's oldest, has since left for Korea, where he'll spend the next seven months with his Mom's family attending a University over there.  What a great opportunity for him!

      The week after Memorial Day, the temps soared up to the high 70's.  I know our friends in Arizona will find it hard to believe that these temps were too hot, but it was certainly too fast!  Saturday, June 5th, we moved four of our campers to higher areas, as their spots on the river went under water.  On June 6th, the water was rising and around noon Gary moved ouir rig forward in our space about 40 feet, to avoid the lowest area.  Between 7 & 8pm the river rose another foot and we decided we better get to high ground, while we could still drive our 5W out of there.  Culverts were getting backed up and water was starting to wash out portions of the campground roads.  We moved to one our group areas.  It's about 15 feet higher and actually overlooks our regular site.   The next day, our site was completely underwater, except for the area where we had put our supply tents.  The forst service brought in help and sandbagged all along our
river.  

         We wound up closing 5 of the 6 campgrounds along the river. They stayed closed all that week, until crews could get in and repair sections of the roads the following Friday;  They did a great job and we reopened all the campgrounds on the 11th, just in time for another weekend of snow.  We stayed where we were until June 15th, when we moved back to our site.  It sure was nice to get back to our water and sewer hookups again.  We love being right on the river, as long as it stays in it's place.  The other major problem this Spring has been trees, either being taken down, due to the bark beetle infestation, or falling down and being uprooted, due to the spring snows, excess rain, and decreasing windbreak.  We've had two major campgrounds closed all spring   We got our last hosts in last Friday to open one.  The other one opens today.  We have another remote campground that we took a host into on June 4th.  On the 7th, a small bridge washed out leaving her stranded.  The only way in was a very rough ATV road.  Our district ranger took a radio, extra drinking water, a generator, and gas into her, as she elected to stay there during the two weeks it took to reopen the road into her campground.  She had her 15 yr old son with her, so wasn't completely alone and day hikers came through as well.  At this point all of our campgrounds are open and the weather is expected to be gorgeous this weekend.  It's back up in the high 70's, and while we're keeping an eye on the river, the worst should be over and we're hoping the floods don't happen again.  Thank goodness, we haven't had any major property damage and most importantly no loss of life or injuriesl   As we've all heard on the news, many other places have been much worse.
    Otherwise we're doing well.  My ankle has healed well and while there's still some swelling, I'm no longer limping, unless I overdo it. 
    For the third year, we attended the National Fallen Firefighter's Memorial Golf Tournament in Utah, where Gary played with the Evanston Fire Department's team and I helped with the tournament and spoke briefly at the luncheon.
    I haven't done much quilting, with moving our rig around, but have completed a couple small projects.  We've seen family and are looking forward to several spending some time with us this summer.  Gary's son was her with his family, including our miracle grandson,  Bowdie, who was one year old on the 25th of June.
    We're enjoying our Verizon wireless service, allowing us to get e-mail at our cell phone reception site, about 3 miles from here.  We got a small netbook that is easier to handle in the truck, than our fullsize laptop. We've done a little more geocaching and are sitting at 979 caches.  We should make Gary's goal of 1000 by September.  For now summer is here, we haven't had snow for 2 weeks, the moose and deer (with fawns) are moving around, and life is good. 
    Dancing along (& away from), the river................
    Hugs, Katy, Gary, Rusty, and Spicy