And It Turned On Us.......

I know I've said before that I love walking up the bike path with the small stream on my right. Sometimes it is very quiet and shallow. But when we get rain there is enough water that it burbles over rocks and branches creating a very relaxing background noise. The sound of a happy woodland stream.

We had some thunderstorms last night....not an unusual part of a Wisconsin summer. Lots of thunder and lightning. The power went off for a few minutes around 3:00 a.m. and suddenly someone was knocking hard at our front door. Fenway barking....middle-of-the-night disorientation but Dave answered to find that our lower level garage was flooding.

I got up and looked out the window and faced a complete moment of "Where am I?" There was no street, there was no park leading to the bandshell.....there was no parking lot....there was just brown water and an amazing current of water heading east toward Lake Michigan.

And then I looked down to the driveway leading down into our garage.....cars parked there and now underwater. You can see our white RV in the background...water creeping up over the tires.

Dave went down but no one could get into the garage. The firemen were here and reported the water was at least 6-8 feet deep and still coming in. Muddy water.....the creek overflowed when the pipe letting it flow to Lake Michigan was blocked with debris. This was a sight I never expected to see. We moved to the condo for the "easy life"....no yardwork etc.

Morning let us see the full extent of the exterior damage and just how high the water was at our garage level. (And this is after the water went down 2 feet.) We are still waiting to get inside. The water has to be pumped out, the dead cars towed away and then we can get to the personal belongings stored down there. Suitcases are toast....golf clubs may be too. I'm just hoping I can save at least some of my Santa Clause collection for the holidays.

So it will be a muddy mess to clean up.....but I keep reminding myself about Katrina....and Puerto Rico....and Houston....and Hawaii. We walk up to the third floor (the elevator is out) and walk into a comfortable condo where everything is AOK......we are fortunate and will just deal with the crap.