How Was Your New Year's Eve?
Our's was pretty quiet this year, as mudslides blocked the main highway, and flooding threatened Downieville Saturday morning. We made a preliminary scouting run about midday and discovered that we could get from our main house in Camptonville to the secondary road leading to Forest City, where we had planned to spend the weekend at our house there. However, our friends weren't able to join us.
That was ok in the end, as we were tired after wandering around checking out the storm's effects all afternoon.
That tiny speck at the top of the photo is Glenn, trenching to divert some of the water off the road beside our house.
This is a seasonal creek flowing beside our Forest City house, only the culvert got plugged during the storm and the water was flowing over the top and across the road into our neighbor's yard. Glenn was able to unplug the culvert, and the water level dropped a bit over New Year's Eve to flow back through properly.
This road leads back down to Main Street from our house, and will be 4WD only in the coming season... and impassable until spring, as the road body is heavy clay and the water cut some very deep gullies in it. Luckily, the main road, School Street, remains passable, until the snows get too deep, then we snowshoe in until spring. For the past six years, we have spent most of the winter in Camptonville, but hiked in and out for 13 winters before that.
Rex is capturing one of the cascades filling up Oregon Creek, the creek that runs through Forest City. The north and south branches of the creek come together at the bottom of our tiny town, then the creek continues to fill for twenty miles until it meets the Middle Yuba River, where there is a popular swimming area, which was flooded this weekend.
Things could have been much worse than what we had found. When we came in at dark, I decided to check the weather forecast and my email, and found this photo, sent out by my friend, Nancy, who had been moving all her guests to the upstairs rooms, as water was seeping into their downstairs ones. The back yard of the inn across the river bridge from her was awash as well. The grocery store had been pumping water out of their basement all day, and there were places where side streets were damaged by water, as well as a section of Highway 49 near Camp Yuba where the road had been reduced to one lane.
photo courtesy Nancy Carnahan, owner of the Riverside Inn in Downieville
Our dear friends Don and Jacie live only about 100 yards further down the road beside the levee, just out of sight in this photo, and we were expecting to go over for a New Years Day brunch. I decided to call first, and the water had dropped significantly (like more than five feet overnight), but they had spent Saturday sandbagging seep holes in the levee, as well as where the beach near them had disappeared under the river, and the band expected to play locally for New Years Eve hadn't made it up.
We did have a lovely brunch together, along with Mike and Nancy (from the motel) and Mike and Debby, and a walk along the river to check out the debris washed up, and the receding waters... although it was raining lightly and snowed a bit yesterday afternoon. It continues to rain tonight.
We lost electricity in the midafternoon, and headed back to Camptonville (they are only 20 miles apart), to make sure things were under control there. We had a romantic candlelit evening and slept late today.
We still needed to tend to the errands in Nevada City we couldn't take care of earlier in the weekend, now that the slides had been cleared and got our shopping done and a trip to get some yarn as well.
In the quiet this afternoon, after the power came back on, I got busy making up this fuzzy little bear from a pattern I printed off the Berroco website. I get their weekly newsletter "Knit Bits" by email, and this bear, dubbed the Harry Bear, was accompanied by a Harry Potter scarf pattern. I will finish off the bear and stuff, then embroider a nose and eyes with black perle cotton, but skip the miniature scarf, as the bear will get sent off to grandbaby Mia, in honor of her first birthday later this month. The yarn called for is Berroco Chinchilla, but my local Ben Franklin only had a few non-bearlike colors, so I selected something obscure I found on sale today at Ben Franklin: Sullivans Sensuale... being washable as well as cuddly made it an appropriate choice for a toddler.
It has been a different kind of New Year's Eve weekend, and it's back to work tomorrow. I hope that the weather subsides a bit and that the year to come will be peaceful and prosperous for all... no, I didn't get a Product Review together, what with no power, but will have it up tomorrow evening. Blessings of the New Year!
That was ok in the end, as we were tired after wandering around checking out the storm's effects all afternoon.
That tiny speck at the top of the photo is Glenn, trenching to divert some of the water off the road beside our house.
This is a seasonal creek flowing beside our Forest City house, only the culvert got plugged during the storm and the water was flowing over the top and across the road into our neighbor's yard. Glenn was able to unplug the culvert, and the water level dropped a bit over New Year's Eve to flow back through properly.
This road leads back down to Main Street from our house, and will be 4WD only in the coming season... and impassable until spring, as the road body is heavy clay and the water cut some very deep gullies in it. Luckily, the main road, School Street, remains passable, until the snows get too deep, then we snowshoe in until spring. For the past six years, we have spent most of the winter in Camptonville, but hiked in and out for 13 winters before that.
Rex is capturing one of the cascades filling up Oregon Creek, the creek that runs through Forest City. The north and south branches of the creek come together at the bottom of our tiny town, then the creek continues to fill for twenty miles until it meets the Middle Yuba River, where there is a popular swimming area, which was flooded this weekend.
Things could have been much worse than what we had found. When we came in at dark, I decided to check the weather forecast and my email, and found this photo, sent out by my friend, Nancy, who had been moving all her guests to the upstairs rooms, as water was seeping into their downstairs ones. The back yard of the inn across the river bridge from her was awash as well. The grocery store had been pumping water out of their basement all day, and there were places where side streets were damaged by water, as well as a section of Highway 49 near Camp Yuba where the road had been reduced to one lane.
photo courtesy Nancy Carnahan, owner of the Riverside Inn in Downieville
Our dear friends Don and Jacie live only about 100 yards further down the road beside the levee, just out of sight in this photo, and we were expecting to go over for a New Years Day brunch. I decided to call first, and the water had dropped significantly (like more than five feet overnight), but they had spent Saturday sandbagging seep holes in the levee, as well as where the beach near them had disappeared under the river, and the band expected to play locally for New Years Eve hadn't made it up.
We did have a lovely brunch together, along with Mike and Nancy (from the motel) and Mike and Debby, and a walk along the river to check out the debris washed up, and the receding waters... although it was raining lightly and snowed a bit yesterday afternoon. It continues to rain tonight.
We lost electricity in the midafternoon, and headed back to Camptonville (they are only 20 miles apart), to make sure things were under control there. We had a romantic candlelit evening and slept late today.
We still needed to tend to the errands in Nevada City we couldn't take care of earlier in the weekend, now that the slides had been cleared and got our shopping done and a trip to get some yarn as well.
In the quiet this afternoon, after the power came back on, I got busy making up this fuzzy little bear from a pattern I printed off the Berroco website. I get their weekly newsletter "Knit Bits" by email, and this bear, dubbed the Harry Bear, was accompanied by a Harry Potter scarf pattern. I will finish off the bear and stuff, then embroider a nose and eyes with black perle cotton, but skip the miniature scarf, as the bear will get sent off to grandbaby Mia, in honor of her first birthday later this month. The yarn called for is Berroco Chinchilla, but my local Ben Franklin only had a few non-bearlike colors, so I selected something obscure I found on sale today at Ben Franklin: Sullivans Sensuale... being washable as well as cuddly made it an appropriate choice for a toddler.
It has been a different kind of New Year's Eve weekend, and it's back to work tomorrow. I hope that the weather subsides a bit and that the year to come will be peaceful and prosperous for all... no, I didn't get a Product Review together, what with no power, but will have it up tomorrow evening. Blessings of the New Year!
posted by Birdsong | 9:27 PM
2 Comments:
Glad you made it through, I thought of you when 49 was closed due to the rock slide.
We've had more water than we need, certainly, and more coming today. I just hope the snow levels drops, and less of the white stuff melts off.
Stay safe, hope to see you at Spinning Saturday!
Glad everything is OK. What great pictures.
You must have laughed at my silly blog post complaining about 14 days of drizzle and a high creek.
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