And the Flood Came

It rained and rained and when it got through raining, it rained some more. The news said in some places we got 4 inches in 24 hours and I believe that must have been the case here at the camp.

This is not the creek -- it's the road:

Serenity Pond:

The Secret Creek (not such a secret, here):

The next day I went looking around and had to do it by foot, as Easy would surely have gotten stuck. On my morning walk I went down Beech Bottom Trail--which leads to the Secret Creek--to see just how bad it got. The creek was so far up in the woods you could not tell where it was supposed to be. Best estimate was I could only get within 300 yards to the original creek bank. I went around clearing the roads of limbs that had blown down and occasionally ran across a crawdad or two in the process.

Several days later, when things had almost returned to normal and the Secret Creek was a little more secretly again, I went on trail patrol this time with Easy. It is amazing how powerful moving water is. There were huge logs across the trail in a few places. Some I had to cut away and a few I was able to move just enough to get off the trail. I set out to find a new way down to the creek as there were a couple of places on Beech Bottom Trail that were low and too wet to cross over with Easy.

I discovered an old trail that had been forgotten and actually had large trees across it from a long time ago. I spent half a day clearing it out and making a few detours here and there and finally managed to make it once again connect to the Beech Creek Trail. This "Hidden Pathway," as I am going to call it, was a great new route and has already been marked with trail markers that I had ordered and which came in a few weeks ago.


The camp is officially closed and I kind of look forward to things settling down a bit and watching the critters during the winter months. Oh, I still have a project or two in the works, and will continue to make improvements during this slow time of the year.