It Could Be Much Worse!

Well, its not nice, but it could be much much worse. We had 2 1/2 - 3 feet of water, but it was mostly drained out on its own by the time we got home yesterday. It was not sewerage, as our next door neighbors had. We hired 2 young men to haul a lot of stuff out to the curb and it was miraculously gone with the regular garbage this morning. We have a lot of things to replace, but our furnace may be saved and none of the appliances or furniture was new. Some plastic boxes floated up on the tide and then back down without tipping! Someone just told me I should make an ad for Rubbermaid.

We hope to have the bedroom and TV room downstairs usable by the time Rachel and Ben get here about July 1. But they can use the upstairs guest room for a while if need be.

There is still a little water in the basement and the Emergency authorities are saying we shouldn't flush our toilet because it might back up, so we are being creative with strategic visits to friends, libraries, etc. Friends who live above a store downtown are away for 4 days now and we are taking care of their cat and showering there.

I don't have the heart to post any pictures.

Tonight Cedar Rapids is in big, big trouble with water inundating downtown and 4000 homes evacuated. Many other cities have bigger trouble than Decorah. We just need for the rain to stop!

Almost Home

We are waking up in a motel in Davenport and will be home today. Decorah has had massive flooding since a 7 inch rain on Saturday night. The best photos are at http://theinspiredmedia.com

On Monday, our basement had 3 feet of water. It was going down yesterday. Our neighborhood was evacuated on Monday, but the mandatory order has now been lifted. And the streets that were closed are opened enough to let us get home. Our river was 2 or 3 feet higher than the previous record, set in 1941. We had a bitter 5 year fight to keep a Super WalMart from filling in flood plain just below Decorah. We lost and I'm thinking CIVIL SUIT for our friends right on the river. I'm quite certain that 4 friends of ours had overflow into their houses.

We have a lot of furniture and storage items in our basement. This is not going to be fun. The weather forecast is very bad - I hope it is wrong.

By popular demand, I'm going to keep this blog going a bit longer to report to our out-of-town friends on the situation.

Another Family Picture

This is most of the family of Alan's brother, Barry.

Family Pictures for Lauren and Rachel

The little one on the right here is Anna, our great-niece. I got to attend the end-of-the-school- year program at her nursery school. Anna sang with gusto!

Alan, the Big Sports Fan

Alan is loyal to only one team, the Detroit Red Wings. We hadn't had a chance to watch, or even listen to, any of the Stanley Cup games. But for game 6, we found a sports bar in Kingston and got to see the Red Wings win the big cup. Here Alan does a high five with a sweet young college student from Detroit who wore her jersey to the bar. We had a great evening, even though we were twice as old as the next oldest person in this bar. AND even though they had music blasting on top of all the TVs.

We "Hit a Wall"

After our big day in Quebec City, we sat down to plan the next day on the town. I don't remember which of us said, "or we could just head for Detroit?" Then the phrase "hit a wall" was uttered. Suddenly it all caught up with us and we were exhausted. We had had a fabulous trip. But we were tired of studying every night as though we were facing an exam the next day. Barb told us that we had twelve hours of driving to get to Detroit, so the next day we waited until she said we had six left and stopped for the night in Kingston, Ontario.

Big Year for Quebec!

On July 3, Quebec (all of Canada?) will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of this city. I believe it was Cartier who landed here. This anniversary is big and the city is shiny bright with reminders of the big date everywhere.

Crêpe

Mine had cheese with mushrooms. Yum!

We were promised that we would think we were in Europe when we got to the old walled city of Quebec.

Happy Birthday, Rachel!!!

Happy, happy, happy birthday to our dear Rachel. What a lot of changes coming in the next year! It won't be long until she and Ben have a little boy who will undoubtedly be as curious about the world as this one was.

Quebec City

Blogger trouble and I've managed to post only a couple of pictures from today in Quebec City. Maybe I can try again in the morning.

Today we shared the streets of Old Quebec with hundreds (probably thousands) of school trip kids. Here some of them are having a wonderful time interacting with a golden living statue.

Trompe-l'œil

Gannets on Bonaventure Island

This is a 19 second clip from You Tube of the gannet colony exactly where we saw them. We learned later that this is now the largest colony in the world. One in Scotland used to be larger, but it has no space to expand and this one is gradually getting larger.

Appreciation for a GREAT SHOWER!

Tonight I wrote my friend Katy, "I just had the best shower I have ever had in a campground. I dread showers because the room is the temperature of the outside air AND there are always open windows that cannot be closed or some sort of vent that makes for a nasty wind-chill factor. This one was closed up tight, no coins needed, and lots of very hot water. Sublime!"

Setting Out for a Hike

Its a NO HOCKEY night in Canada

There seems to be no such thing as a sports bar in Quebec. We are watching the score of the Stanley Cup online. Go, Red Wings!

Huge Group of Black Scoters

(I got things out of order a bit here.) On Sunday, we turned west as we came around the Gaspe Peninsula, so we are in a sense heading home. We waited out the fog until noon and had only a few patches where we could see nothing.

What is that Water?

This is the view from our trailer window last night at Ste-Anne-des-Monts. We walked to a nearby restaurant where they found us a kind English-speaking waitress. I asked her, "Is that the ocean or the St. Lawrence River?" Our AAA map showed it clearly as the river, but I had never been almost blown off my feet by a wind off a river. The ensuing conversation was interesting. It is technically the river, but it is 100 KM across. They call it the ocean. It is salty as is the river all the way upstream to Quebec City.

One More Bird Shot from Saturday

On Sunday, we talked to a man the the interpretive center for the national park. He helped us sort out what we had seen on Saturday. I had had my binoculars along, but was too excited about taking pictures to get them out. In this photos of the birds on the cliffs, there are gannets and little black and white birds that look like miniature penguins. (You might have to click on the picture to see the larger version.) Most of the those are Common Murres. There might have been a few Razonbills among them. We did not see any Puffins. We learned that there are only a few pairs on Bonaventure. They nest in burrows or deep crevices and must be well down the cliffs to avoid being prey for foxes. We learned that there was ice in 1990 which allowed foxes to cross over and there are now 4 in residence. A Gannet can fight off a fox with its beak but a puffin cannot.
We also saw lots of Black Guillemots. And Great Black-Backed Gulls. We were told that we would have seen Black-Legged Kittiwakes, but they just got mixed up with the gulls for us. Everywhere, we have seen cormorants.

A Big Day!

Yesterday was wonderful. We had an adventure that will remain vivid in our memories forever. I had a fever Friday night and we were tempted to delay this outing for a day, but the weather forecast for Saturday was good and for the next few days bad. So I dragged my body out and felt so happy that I did. We took a boat from Percé out and around the Percé Rock, then out to Bonaventure Island. We went around the island and saw gannets and several other kinds of birds by the thousands, in the air and on ledges. (We need to work on identifying the birds a bit more - I'll let you know.) We then landed on the island and hiked up and over it to a place where we could be only a few feet away from a solid mass of gannets, nesting and getting ready to nest. We didn't see any eggs, but some looked as though they were already sitting on an egg. Others were busy bringing in materials for their minimalist nests. They are already paired. One of the mysteries is how they find each other.

We are sitting in a hotel dining room where we had breakfast and are using their internet. The Rock and Bonaventure Island are lost out there in the fog. We hope it will lift a bit for the rest of our scenic drive around the Gaspe. The photos I just uploaded continue on another page - follow the "older post" link at the bottom. Alan says the best ones are there.

Parc national de l'Île-Bonaventure-et-du-Rocher-Percé