Well, we are home again, after a very early and long Sunday.  The highway to the north is already closed due to a bridge being washed out, which doesn't really affect us because it is 5 hours to the next big town going north.  Our concern was going south, toward Wasilla.

On Saturday evening, we drove down and looked at Montana Creek at three different points.  All three places were flooded. Montana Creek campground was 2 feet under water, and part of the creek was running through the culvert for the bike path under the highway.  Out Yoder Road, we couldn't even get close to the bridge, as the creek was running across and then alongside the road.  Out Montana Creek Road, the creek was eroding the road on a corner, and had eaten the dirt road down to one lane.

We heard reports that Willow Creek (30 minutes south of us) was expected to cross the road sometime after midnight.  We had decided that I should go down and stay in Wasilla Saturday evening, and Craig would stay home with the kids, just in case the road was shut down, as I was continuing to have contractions, although they weren't consistent or regular.  My brother showed up that evening, and said that it didn't appear to him that the road was in any danger, so we decided that I would just stay home.

Little Willow Creek

We went to bed, and I woke up at midnight.  I gave the baby his pacifier back, went to the bathroom, and thought I would check the latest press release on the highway.  It stated that they were probably going to close the highway in Houston, due to flooding of the Little Susitna River sometime after 11pm.  Here it was already 12am, so I called the Emergency Operations Center, and they said there was water in one lane, so the highway was closed to one lane of traffic, and was holding. 

We made the decision to all head into town, so that they weren't trapped up here for who knew how long, as a lot of times the highway gets washed away when the water flows over it.  So, I packed up three days worth of clothes for the kids and I, while dh pulled things together he might need for work and for the house project.  We left the house at 2am, hoping that the highway would still be open.

When we finally got to Houston, where we thought we would see the river practically running across the highway, we saw that all the water problem was from the ditch overflowing onto the northbound lane of the highway!  I was riding in my brother's 4-wheel drive pickup, and dh was driving the kids in the minivan.  He called me from his cell phone and said, "You got me out of bed for that!?!"  LOL!  It was rather anti-climactic!

We got to my parent's house at 3:15am, and settled down to finish our night.  We got up at 9:30am, went to church at 1:30pm, and headed home.  When we got hom, the phones, cell phones, and internet were all down!  Apparently, a piece of a cabin floating down Willow Creek severed a fiber optic cable that was buried under the river, and about 1,800 people from Willow north to Healy (about 180 miles of road) lost telephone, cell, and internet service for 21 hours, from Sunday into Monday morning.

So, instead of my dh being able to work from home today, he had to drive back into the city (about 2 hours south), where he is staying the night, because he has to be in town again tomorrow.

Talk about a saga...

We had another little adventure this evening, that I will blog about later.  Right now, I am going to go get some sleep.  I have a midwife appointment tomorrow in Wasilla, so I better get some rest for the trip to town tomorrow.

I will try to post some more pictures of the flood soon.

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Aug. 22, 2006 - Memories

Posted by Canadagirl

Boy will you have memories in this saga. I pray that this will all calm down and it will be easy for the rest of this journey. I can't wait till we get to hear the rest of the story. ( Paul Harvey )
In Him,

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Aug. 22, 2006 - Untitled Comment

Posted by alaskahannah

I'm so thankful that you all are okay! Too bad you had to pack-up in the middle of the night. You will definitely have some stories to tell this baby!

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