Like much of the central US, our area has been inundated with higher than normal rainfall. The result is that most of our outdoor projects have been put on hold. It also meant an extended soccer season, which put most of our indoor projects on hold.
Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve carefully monitored the level of the river. While our house sits on top of a ridge some 80 or 100 feet above the river bed, we do have a field down there adjacent to the river with hunting equipment and a small boat.
A quick drive into town via the dirt roads gives us a pretty solid idea of the river level. Yes, those are tree TOPS touch and partially in the water. And we’re talking big, tall trees along the river bank. That’s also a whole tree floating down the river.
From the house, we can see the water when the river is up, but still in its banks as it was last week. This weekend, the river has run over the banks in many areas near the house, including some crop fields that we can see. That brown stuff on either side of the center tree is water. The left side of that tree is normally a dry crop field.
Last week, we went down to the field and pulled the boat out of the creek which was up significantly.We pulled it from the water and tied it to a different tree a little further up.
Here’s a view of what is normally a barely trickling creek. A week ago it was about 10 feet wide and at least 10 feet deep. At this point, we cannot even get to the creek.
CAT also wired the hunting tripod near the river to a large tree.
We were discussing putting out some catfish lines in the creek, but, now that the river is up and the field is flooded, we’re are just hoping our little boat is still where we left it. The tripod now has water half-way up the legs, or about where CAT’s feet are in the picture above, if you can pick it out among the trees and debris at the legs. It’s about center in this picture behind the diagonal tree trunk.
Here CAT is standing where the end of our field road would be. This is normally still on the downhill slope of the road from the top of the ridge. We didn’t risk walking any further into the water.
A day later, the water was up another 2 or 3 feet. Unfortunately, it looks like we are expecting more rain over the next week and the corps are planning to release additional water from upstream. It looks like any field projects or river fishing is out of the question for awhile.
Here’s hoping for drier weather soon!
~Mouse