August 1, 2011 :: More from our neck of the woods...

Well, if you have heard about the missing Missouri State Trooper, that is unfolding just about in our back yard. Ok, so not in our back yard, but very very close to us.
Click here to watch the newscast about it.

This newscast was recorded 1/4 mile to the east of our house. In fact, my brother emailed me tonight and said, "We're watching the news and the news guy is right by your house."  Yep, that's true.


The truck and boat was found 2 miles on the other side (west) of our house, down at what we call Newburg's corner. Remember this photo?

That's where the trooper disappeared from.

And although I've checked twice to make sure all of our doors are locked tonight, we're probably the safest we've ever been with 30 State Troopers driving back and forth.

I hope the guy is fine. Even if he just fell in the water, the current down at that corner is massive. Seriously, please join me in praying for him.

It's now midnight and the patrol cars are still driving by like crazy.

Friday, July 29, 2011 :: Who started this rumor??

People have been telling me, "Looks like the water is receding." Which makes me want to stop and look around and go, "Really?? Because I hadn't noticed a whole lot of that."

Now, to be fair, yes, the water level has went down a little. But honestly, that's like saying an inch of water evaporated out of an olympic sized swimming pool. To prove my point, I took some photos today... (click on any of them to see them larger)

Here's the panoramic view from the top of the levee a mile west of us.

This is a mile west of our house, on the west side of the west levee. You can see the water is starting to eat the side of the levee away. Although it would have to eat quite a bit to break all the way through, you never like to see your levees doing this.

Continue on down the road about another mile and our neighbor's NObama sign has literally floated down the river. Sorry Kelsey. You know I would have saved it for you if I could have.

Continue west about another half a mile and the highway has completely washed out, indicated by the roaring rapids through here.

Also, this pivot is in serious trouble as it appears the ground underneath it has started to wash away. We are wondering if the other end of this pivot has washed up against the poles down there and toppled them over, along with the lines. When I was down there, I thought it had, but I can't seem to prove it from any of my photos.

This one (also down that direction) is one of our neighbors' homes. It looks as though all of his bushes are going to die around his house. That just stinks, ya know? And I know he's already lost a couple of trees, too. You can buy new possessions, but you can't just go out and buy a new 30 foot tall tree or established bushes.

Come back to our house and head south about a quarter mile, and this is what you will see. Actually, we do own this field (and for as far as you can see), and although it looks like dead stalks laying on the ground in the foreground, it is in fact a mat of dead stalks floating in about a foot or two of water.

Continue south of us about another mile and you will find this:

And this--we own this field, too, what is to the right of the gravel road...you know, the gravel road you can't see because it is covered with water.

Now, if you come back and travel straight east of us about a mile, you will see these fields. Again, anything brown is dead corn standing in water.

...and this...

Go back to our house, and here's what's going on there...
First, the deer are feasting on our poor little apple trees, or at least the bottom half of them. We have four of these trees--I hope they survive...and if I catch any deer out there munching away...well, let's just say it won't be pretty.

In other "wildlife" news, apparently massive hoards of flies accompany floodwater or something. I've resorted to hanging fly-strips in the garage....and if I could remember where I put the rest of the box of fly-strips, I would hang a couple in my kitchen. So if you come visit me, don't judge me for the nasty fly-strips hanging in my kitchen....or the couch and deep-freeze out on the front porch. KIDDING. Just kidding, people. (...about the couch and deep-freeze, not about the fly-strips in my kitchen)

But speaking of my deep-freeze, the guys moved it from town back into the garage today. YEAH! (I can't tell you how inconvenient it is to drive to town just to get into your deep freeze.) I did take the "opportunity" to defrost it and get it all organized and sorted through...even if it doesn't look like it from this photo....

 And last but not least, although I am making progress on the unloading of boxes part, the sunroom still looks like this. <sigh> At least the boxes are sorted out into rows, with each row containing items that go in a certain place in the house. So if I'm looking for a book that went on the tall bookcase in the school room, I at least know where to start looking.

So, what do you think? Is the water receding? Maybe, but not enough. And it does sound like the Corps has a schedule to start reducing releases, but that won't start for a while yet. But I'll save that tasty bit of information for another time. All I'll post right now is this quote from the Corps' facebook page, "Eventually, this steady drawdown from the reservoirs, and respective floodplains, will bring water levels low enough for contractors (weather and funding permitting) to begin repairs as early as Dec. 1." (emphasis mine)


Wow, Dec. 1. And don't you love how they make it sound like such good news. More on that another time. 

Thursday, July 21, 2011 :: How To Get Water When You Have No Water

Simple. Follow these easy steps...

Get yourself a 1500 gallon poly-tank and a trailer and fill it full of water. (the tank...not the trailer)

Fix yourself up all manner of fittings and valves coming out of said water tank so that the water goes into a pressure tank. 

Then run pressurized water line out of pressure tank, thru the doggie door into the garage... 

...through the garage into a hydrant in the wall of the garage...ok, so we had to remove the hydrant, and that is a long story in itself....

Start 'er all up and VOILA! Water in the house. The good kind.

Does that sound simple?? Oh yeah, you know it wasn't. Let me just tell you...


The water tank did not fit between the fenders of the trailer like it was supposed to. So it is loaded on the front and it is working, just not as planned.  The water shut-off valve in the house needed to be replaced for our "new water system" to work. When the plumber (Tom) cut through the line, water started coming out like mad. When I walked into the room, the water was about 6 inches deep. (We do not have a basement--this is on the main floor of the house.) They used black electrical tape to seal it off until we could get the valve shut off in the yard.

Which brings me to the next issue--the valve in the yard can only be shut off by using a long T-shaped "wrench". Since we had packed everything up in the house and garage, as well as the shop, we had no idea where that wrench was. Finally found that and then we couldn't find the valves in the yard. We had 6 people out there poking around in the ground with wires trying to hit the valve caps that were just under the grass. (Imagine driving by our house at that moment....) We ended up having to get a metal detector. (Thank you, Corey, for finding a metal detector for us!)

Valves located and wrench located, we tried to shut the valve off and it was froze up. Yes, I'm serious--I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried! The man who put the valves in (back in 1994) said he's put valves like that in for years and has never ever seen one freeze up before. Of course.


I don't even know how they got the valve issue resolved, but somehow Tom was able to do what he needed to do in the house and they hooked up the lines through a hydrant in the garage...turned it on...and blew out the hydrant. Water, once again, spewing everywhere in that little room in the house....

Got that water stopped, pulled the hydrant out and replaced it with a straight line. Turned water on again and the first thing we replaced, the valve, started spewing water. Turned water off. Fixed valve.

Turned water back on....and it worked!! PHEW!!

Now I suppose one of my children will trip over that blue line in the garage tomorrow and pull everything apart. Because that is just how things apparently go around here! 


But PRAISE GOD WE HAVE WATER.  It had been less than 24 hours and I was already getting tired of flushing the toilet with a bucket.
----------------------------------------------

One other thing--I found this satellite image of the flooding and wanted to show you how God has really just protected our area. In the duplicate images below, the left one just shows the image, but the right one shows the image with our place marked by a red dot and an arrow. So when I say we have water on 3 sides of us, I'm serious. (click on it for larger view)

How amazing is that!!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011 :: An Ironic NEW CRISIS

The most frequent question I get now-a-days is this, "Do you have water in your house?" Thankfully, the answer is no.

Except NOW, the answer will be, "No, in fact, we don't have ANY water AT ALL."


Yes, that's right, now we have NO water where there's supposed to BE water--IN..OUR..PIPES.  Apparently a water line has broken somewhere, likely under the rushing floodwater to the west of us, so they have shut off the water to everyone down this way. Nice.

They are going to do some investigating tomorrow to see if they can figure out where the break is and if it can be fixed (or kinda fixed). If not, guess what....we will have no water until the water goes down....which will be September or October.

How's that for irony. Yesterday having no water was good. Today having absolutely no water is BAD.

So for all of you that have this today...

...be thankful.

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 :: Amazing Video!

Wouldn't you know it, on a night I thought I wouldn't have anything to post, I ran across this video by Barnes Realty. It starts out near Fortescue and travels west over the highway at first, then the highway and railroad  (when they are together), then when the highway veers off to the south, the video stays on the railroad, then they come together again. (And for those who don't know, where the video begins is approximately 4-5 miles straight south of us.)

Particularly note the damage that is shown between 1:25 and 1:30. Truly amazing.

One thing people often don't realize if they aren't familiar with this area is that this video is of the WIDTH of the river, like from side to side, not upstream or downstream. The river flows (basically) from the north, to the south. This video was shot starting at the east, traveling west.

We're talking an amazing swath of destruction, and not just for the highway and railroad....

Monday, July 18, 2011 :: Photos!

Ok, since I didn't figure anyone was really interested in seeing photos of my pantry, I got some water shots for you today. Some of these kinda overlap others I have taken previously, but thought you might like to see what the water looks like today anyway.

Panoramic view a mile from our house, looking west, standing on top of the Little Tarkio Creek levee. The view is the same on the other side of the highway, there's just some trees blocking the view.
(click on it to view larger)

Looking back east you can see the levee that is protecting us, and our elevator on the other side. Our elevator is actually about 3/4 of a mile from the levee, even though it looks like it is sitting JUST on the other side of it.

This (in the circle) is a FISH....ALONG THE SIDE OF THE ROAD. You just don't see that everyday, now do ya. Ok, well we do, but not most people....

This is the highway under water. I believe the actual highway is starting to wash away in the circle. And we're in for another 6 weeks of this.

The debris along the side of the highway is really starting to pile up. Mostly corn stalks and other plant life...well, it was life....but also some "fun" stuff like lawn chairs, pieces of docks, propane tanks, and tires. My favorite so far, a can of WD-40...see I told you that stuff is useful!

A neighbor's house--these neighbors are in their 90's and are living at a truck stop hotel. Just saw them last night and they said the water was touching the bottoms of the main floor beams, but had not ruined the floor yet.

We've also been getting a lot of comments like, "The river's going down, isn't it?" Well, yes, but if you look at the front corner of this guy's house, you can see the water has went down about 6 inches. And do you think that has made this guy any bit of difference at this point? So yes, although the river has went down a little, we haven't seen the impact of that much at all.

And it looks like the river level has kinda leveled off.

I'd love to see this graph heading downwards, but hey, I'll take a flat-liner any day at this point.

Sunday, July 17, 2011 :: An Organized Pantry

Well, I had really intended to get some pictures today since some of you were disappointed I haven't posted any in the last few days. But that didn't happen. I DID, however, get my pantry put back together, which makes me so happy.  You try living with your pantry in rubbermaid tubs packed away in your daughter's bedroom for a month and you'll probably come to the same conclusion I have....let the flood have it, but one way or another, I'm putting it all back.   Trust me on this one.

One good thing is that my pantry NOW has NO food that is expired (did you know Jello actually expires??) and it is super tidy, clean, and organized. In fact, I'm so happy about my pantry, I'll share a picture with you...  Ok, ok, this is NOT MY PANTRY. But I do think this pantry is pretty cool. 

And my pantry is pretty organized at the moment. Complete with shelf labels...on clothespins so I can move them as the contents of my pantry changes. I've become a big fan of labeling things over the years. I'm so "global" that I can create a beautifully organized system, walk away from it for a day or two, and when I come back, I don't remember a lick of the system. So although I'm global, I can still read. Hence, the labels, and we're all happy.

We also finished moving everything from the garage back into the house. So although my garage and pantry look fabulous, my school/play room is a complete and total disaster. I should take a picture of THAT for you all. We didn't put anything into place because I'm trying to rearrange and I haven't decided on a configuration yet, so everything just got dumped. This is what I will be tackling this week. Along with about 150 boxes....

And the water? It's the same. Along with the smell. And the animals...although I do think we have one more skunk in the crawl space.... And since things aren't changing much in that department, I'm going to just start updating this blog whenever I have news...or a funny story, because you know how I love a funny story! But I WILL try to get some photos tomorrow and post tomorrow night. And if all else fails, I'll take some picture of MY pantry so we can all enjoy my clean, tidy, organized pantry together.