Adventures in Traveling

{Warning- this is a long post. Feel free to just look at the pictures if that is your thing. Enjoy}

For those of you who have been reading Mom and Dad's blog, you know that on Monday January 26, they experienced a fantastic ice storm that downed a lot of trees, tree branches, phone lines, and power lines. It sounded like there was a lot of work that needed to be done around their house, so I volunteered to go out and help them out.

Monday, February 2, I loaded up the car with Sarah and Steven and headed home to see what I could do. Just before I left, Mom called and asked if I could pick up a chainsaw for them, (I did) as the one they currently had was no longer working, and if they waited to get one from the local home improvement store, it wouldn't be there till Friday. So after a couple stops to pick up needful things, we were on our way!

We had a good trip. The weather was beautifully sunny. The roads were clear. And the children mostly well-behaved. There was one blow-out diaper change performed in the front seat of the car, though. (I do hate stopping at little gas stations just off the freeway in rural Kansas and wondering if it has a changing table in the bathroom. In this instance, I decided not to unbuckle everyone and troop into the bathroom to find out for sure.) And I was very grateful for a portable DVD player that I could use to entertain Sarah after she had reached the "I'm tired of being cooped up in the car for tooooo long" point.

36 hours, 1400 miles and 5 states later, I arrived to find the view to the left. Sometimes when I look at that picture, it doesn't seem so bad, until I remember how open the driveway used to look. Those poor trees! I don't think that any of the trees on Mom and Dad's property survived without some damage. Fortunately for them, the first picture, of the tree uprooted onto the house and car, belongs to someone else, but helps illustrate the scope of damage that occurred here.

Fortunately for me, when I was two hours away, I got a phone call from Dad telling me that the power was back on. Yay! I had brought some things to keep me warm if there was no power, and I was ready for the adventure of living with a generator and candles and no heat except what was provided by the fireplace, but I was happy not to.

It was so sad to see some of the damage. Along the driveway up to Mom and Dad's house were a couple majestic oak trees. Somehow they don't seem quite as majestic when so many of the branches are broken and dangling or laying on the ground. This picture to the left is one of them. Some trees looked like this, some only had minor damage. One tree I saw (but didn't get a picture of) had been split in half. When you looked at it, you could see a tiny portion of the heart of the tree pointing skyward like a peeled banana, with half of the tree broken away to each side.

I did take lots of other pictures, sometimes stopping on the side of the road, if I saw something particularly awesome or sad. (take your pick) One of these was a very knobbly tree with a number of downed limbs near Mom and Dad's house. The other picture is of the drive up to an assisted living complex. That was especially sad looking as all the trees lining the drive looked like someone had taken a chainsaw to them halfway up their trunks and given them a cruel trimming.



















While I was there, I was able to go out to my rental house and help clean it up after my latest tenant unexpectedly decided to move out. Dad did all the skilled labor to fix the lap siding that was torn down with the weather head. Here are some before and after pictures of Dad's handiwork. Isn't he amazing!

Friday February 6, Dan and Miranda came out to help with the clean up efforts. Dan has had some experience cleaning up after disasters, and that seemed to come in handy. Saturday was the big effort on the homefront. Up until then, Dad had been putting in a lot of hours at all the rental sites in town, and this was the first time a concerted effort had been made to clean up the yard.

The cleanup involved a number of things. The main idea was to load up as many branches as we could onto the trailer and cart them off to the county burn site. Some of the trees had obligingly dropped all the broken branches to the ground, but some clung stubbornly to the limbs, and those needed to be cut down. You can see Dan in the tree cutting down one of those branches. Look at that teamwork. Dan did an amazing job with the chainsaw.

Once the branches were down, they either needed to be cut up into the right lengths to be used as firewood (if the limb was large enough) , or to be thrown on the trailer. Miranda did an excellent job hauling branches to the trailer and then stamping them down to make more room for more branches. On Saturday, I believe they made 7 runs to city and county burn piles (from our house, rental houses, and from the neighbor's house).

That evening, after the County drop-off site closed down, we took another trailer-load of tree debris and put it on our burn pile. That was a lovely conflagration. Though we did have to be careful, as it was a bit windy that night and there was a lot of cedar needles that wanted to float away in the air after catching on fire! Sarah seemed to enjoy the fire.

After Dan and Miranda headed home, it was just me (and Sarah and Steven) there to help out. For the first couple days of the following week, Dad was still working at the rental homes. Each morning I would get up and try to get at least two hours of cleanup work done before Sarah or Steven made it clear that it was time to stop. If I gave Sarah rides on tree branches or in the wheelbarrow, I could usually stay out there longer. Sometimes Mom was able to help. We made a good team. We would pile some of the larger branches together, and the next morning Dad would load those up on the trailer to take to the burn pile on his way to other projects. Then mom would rake up the smaller debris while I carted it off to the burn pile.

We did discover that if you piled small twigs and sycamore seed pods or cedar needles on the burn pile, the ashes were hot enough to ignite a new fire. Even after 15-20 hours. Even after it had rained.

On Wednesday, Dad and I were able to get some heavy duty work done on the two big oak trees in the front. Dad would cut up the branches and I would take many load of fire wood to the wood pile. Then we loaded up the trailer and Dad would take it to the county burn site. And while Dad was gone, Barb and I would untangle more branches from the mess below the tree, so that when Dad got back, the branches were ready to be loaded onto the trailer. I don't know how many total trips Dad made to the burn site, but I do know that our wood pile grew exponentially.

One of the pictures that I wish I had taken was off Mom and Dad's firewood supply. When I showed up, there was a stack of about 6 feet long and about 1 foot high (correct me if I am wrong, please. My measurements are never accurate!). By the time I left, that stack had grown considerably. It is now about 15 feet long and at least 4 feet high.

Sometimes, Steven came out with me as I worked, and most of the time he was out there, he was content to watch or nap.

By the time Friday February 13 came, the front yard looked 100% better. Most of the branches and major limbs that had come down were now cleaned up, and there only remained some (OK-- a lot) of smaller twigs around the base of the oak tree that needed to be raked and moved to the burn pile. There are some branches that still need to be removed, but I think Mom and Dad need a professional to come in to do it. Or at least someone with a cherry picker or other machine to lift them high enough to reach the limbs that still need to be cut down. It felt good to see the difference and know that I'd had a hand in helping. It was sad then, that I had to leave, but I was excited about getting home.

I left Friday, and spent the evening and night with Miranda and Dan and some of their friends. I then traveled all day Saturday, and spent the night with Catherine and her family. Sarah is still asking if we can go visit "Aunt Catherine". I would love to, but I think I will have to work up to another trip!

Sunday morning, we got up early and attended church. We went alone, as Catherine's ward didn't meet until 1:30, and I wanted to be halfway home by then. The ward I attended was having ward conference, so I decided to leave halfway through-- I had only intended to go to Sacrament meeting (for an hour), but the ward conference was a two hours. I might have stayed for the whole thing, if: 1. Sarah had been less active, 2. I felt like the couple next to us were not annoyed and distracted by Sarah, 3. I hadn't needed to take Steven out to feed him, 4. I really, really, really wanted to get on my way and get home-- I only had about 8 more hours of travel. The last two excuses was probably the most compelling. Once I had fed Steven, we were out of the meeting, and I was ready to hit the road again.

The last part of the trip wasn't too bad. One thing I learned on this portion of the trip is that it is possible to change a nasty poopy diaper on the center console of your car from the driver's seat! I learned this at a rest stop in Wyoming, where it was freezing cold and the wind was blowing really hard. I had stopped to feed Steven, and Sarah had fallen asleep. I neither wanted to wake Sarah, nor leave her alone in the car. Other times, I have cleared the front passenger seat and stood in the doorway to change a diaper, but the wind was to hard and cold. So I put a pillow down on top of the gear shift, put Steven on that, and changed the diaper!

We did eventually make it home safely. Boy was I happy to be there. Sarah wasn't all that interested. She wanted to finish watching "Polar Express" before she came inside. I had the car halfway unloaded by the time she was ready to come in. Silly girl!

So that was my trip. It was fun, and I am glad I had the opportunity to go and help out. I hope you enjoyed the story and the pictures. I know this was a long post.