storm

Jason and I took a trip up to Dog Woods (our 6 acre campsite and get-away) yesterday to see if there was any damage from January's ice storm and last weeks wind storm.  We expected a few trees and limbs down, but were shocked to see that nearly 50% of the trees throughout the property were either down or severely damaged.   Two trees barely missed hitting the camper and the dog kennel is buried under one of them.  The brand new utility pole we had put in at the end of last year was snapped in two and laying on the ground behind the camper.  The utility company had come out to put up a new pole, but we have to call someone else to reattach the box and meter, so until then we have no power to the camper.  There also used to be a nice line of trees behind the camper shielding it from the road and the driveway, but now there are only a couple left.  The main power lines that run along the easement are only about six feet off the ground right now so I looks like the utility company still has some work to do as well.

Needless to say, Dog Woods did not fare well through the storms and we have a LOT of work to do.  The upside is we will certainly have enough firewood to last us for the next decade.  I think once the weather warms up a bit we're gonna have a tree cutting party and invite any friends and family that cares to help.  *hint hint*  ;)

Hopefully this spring and summer we'll have enough coverage to make it nice and secluded as it usually is.  However right now you can look through the trees and see the hillsides, whereas before you couldn't see the hillside at all, even in winter.   Here are some photos I took while we were there.  They really don't do the damage justice, but gives an idea of what we are contending with.

Most of that blue sky behind the camper used to be shielded by trees:

You can see how low the power lines are in this one:

This is a massive pile of trees, around 8 feet tall where they just all fell on top of each other. It almost looks like a tornado ripped through there.

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We finally got power back this afternoon.  Normally the power being out for a while doesn't bother me, but when the power, and thus heat and hot water, goes away on days where the high temp is still below freezing isn't my idea of a good time.  All I can say is, thank goodness for generators!  We had several  friends and family members offer to take us in for the duration, but with three unruly dogs, one cantankerous cat, three mice, one evil rabbit and two beta fish we figured we were better off staying put.

We settled in for the long haul by hooking up the generator under the back porch (to lessen the noise) and running extension cords up through the deck and into the kitchen window, which we then sealed off with masking tape and plastic.  We have a 5000 watt generator so we were able to run both fridge's, the freezer, the tv, the Wii, two laptops, two lights, one space heater and a few other things as needed.  One little space heater wasn't going to cut it for the entire house, so we settled into the living room and put plastic up over the doorway leading to the rest of the house.  It worked brilliantly!  The  living room stayed at a nice 65 degrees while the rest of the main floor was around 50 degrees and the upstairs bedroms around 42 degrees.  We still slept in the bedroom and kept really warm up there due to our awesome bed and mattress.  The issue was getting out of bed in the morning...brrr...talk about a wake up call!

Wednesday wasn't too bad.  We had only generator power, but we still had our cable modem for Internet usage.  By the time we woke up Thursday morning the cable was out as well.  So no tv and no Internet.  Luckily the TiVo was hooked up so we had tons of stuff to watch. But there is only so much tv one can watch in a day.  And no Internet - gasp!  What did we do before Internet?!  I thought I was going to lose my mind.  I was actually excited to get back to work!  Luckily the power came back on about 2 hours before I got home from work today so it was already almost back up to normal temp...and I got to take a shower!  Ahhh clean and warm.  Life is good.

So we got this nice ice storm yesterday and we were doing pretty good until this morning.  At 9:45am our power went out.  It is now after 10:30pm and still no power.  Worse yet, the word is it could be 7 - 10 days before they get it restored due to the 475,000 homes without power.  All I can say is thank goodness for generators!  We sectioned off the main living room from the rest of the house with plastic over the door to the kitchen (and thus the rest of the house) and powered the living room for the lights, tv, laptops and a space heater.  The plastic is keeping the heat in the room - though the rest of the house is freezing!  I think I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight for the sake of my appendages staying intact.

Our office closed today, but I'm sure we'll be back in business tomorrow.  At least there I can get warm, assuming I can make it out of my driveway.

A branch of the maple tree in our front yard - this is pretty much what all of our surrounds look like, with an inch of snow on top: