The Bus Survives (mostly)!

On December 23rd, the sun came out and the snow melted off the trees around the house and bus. Now that the danger has passed, I feel up to posting some pictures from the storm.

Our power went on and off for a week, but many of our friends were entirely without power for even longer. The Red Cross had a shelter set up at a high school that is 20 minutes or more away from the impacted areas. Highway 2, which connects our area to Seattle, was closed for days due to the danger posed by falling trees.

We tried to move the bus away from a leaning tree (I know, it's not a logical thing to do when there are trees everywhere), but the soggy ground and deep snow was too much for it. Steve thinks we may have thrown a rod in the engine. It's unfortunate, but it was the original 1978 engine and it ran on gasoline. Now we have an excuse to fit the bus with a diesel!

In order to get to work, we had to use our chainsaw to cut numerous trees off of driveways and roads . However, in some areas there were as many as 30 trees down over a quarter mile section of road. Those areas were impassable until road crews cleared a path. Day after day, the trees continued to fall, taking out new sections of power line and blocking roads. 

It was a beautiful but treacherous storm!

The River.