Day trip

Monday, May 2 - Just in case you're wondering, it's still raining.  Lucille has been wanting to take a drive back to her roots, around Monroe City, so today is the day for that.  Mike decided to take the day off to go with us (he was our tour guide, so we were lucky he came along), and Fred also joined us, so the old Explorer was full.  Mike knows all the backroads in this area so he took us past coal mines, old churches (Lucille had attended every one of them as a kid), old cemeteries and places where she thought they might have lived.  The coal mines have distorted the landscape so it is sometimes hard to figure out if we are on the right road, but we thought we found most of the places (the houses have long since been torn down).  We stopped at a gas station/deli hang-out in Monroe City, and Mike asked a few questions, and we spent several hours exploring these roads.  Monroe is close to the White River (flooded), so sometimes our roads ended abruptly.

We don't see think kind of country in Arizona, and this would have really been a pretty drive had the weather been better. 

 After hours of wondering these roads, we stopped at Wendy's in Vincennes for lunch, then headed back down to Decker Chapel to show Lucille the damage from the downed power lines, and the flooded fields.  There is an old toll bridge that crosses into St. Francisville, Illinois, and Joe, of course, took us across it.

From this point on, Lucille was not happy with Joe.  She did not want to see the flooding this close!  This is the Wabash River, and it is way above flood stage.  All the bottom farmland around here is flooded, and the road to this bridge is only inches from flooding.

We next drove past the area where we had been last week, where they were repairing the downed power lines.  A lot of progress had been made, even with the adverse weather and all the mud.  They were using bulldozers to drag the service trucks around in the fields.  There were several new (wooden) poles up, but most of them did not have electric lines attached yet.

It has rained almost every day since this damage was done, and these fields are a mess.  I can't begin to imagine when the farmers will be able to get in them this spring.  Joe talked to someone at the barber shop and he said they had 16 inches of rain in April.  It looked to me like it was 11 inches, and they had about 3 inches before we got here, so we must have experienced around 8 inches during our visit.  One 24-hour period shows 2.42 inches, and there were two other times that it showed over an inch, but it seemed to me that it was an inch a day, with sporadic downpours of multiple inches on the weekends!

We continued our drive back to Decker Chapel.  One road we had been on two weeks ago, where we drove over the levee, now is completely under water all the way to the levee, and someone has parked a boat at the bottom of the levee, probably the people who live just down this road.

We drove back to the one place I used to live.  When we stopped here 2 weeks ago, there was a old shed housing an old tractor (I didn't take a picture, which I regret).  Here is what is left of the shed.

The tornado that took down the power lines also destroyed this shed.  I had tried to talk Collins into taking one of the old pieces of lumber, and obviously, he should have, since there is nothing left.

We then stopped by Claypool again, to show Lucille (she would gladly have missed this stop).  Here is my picture from 2 weeks ago, followed by what it looks like now -- flooded.

Although Claypool pond is high here, it is still within its banks.  This ditch in the forefront also is within its banks, and the road to the pond is out of the water.

..

In this picture, taken from the levee the same as the ones above, it is now all underwater.

When this flooded when I lived here in 5th and 6th grades, my dad would tow us out to the levee in a rowboat so we could catch the bus.

We continued on down the road to the "neck," and quickly came to the end of our road.  We had driven this road all the way around just 2 weeks ago, with Collins and Marilyn, but when we topped the last hill, we hit the flood water and had to turn around.

On our way back, we got behind my school bus buddy, Mike Carter, right along the Claypool levee and talked to him for a few minutes.  The Decker Chapel road is closed due to flooding, so we had to back the way we had come (6th Street Road).  Mike said he was able to take all his kids home this afternoon, but he wasn't sure he would be able to get to them tomorrow morning.  And it is still raining.

We finally headed back to town to drop Fred off, then dropped nephew Mike off at his house.  I had soaked a pot of beans for dinner, so Mike's family joined us, along with Fred and Judy, for ham and beans, and sauerkraut (this is the third time we've had sauerkraut since we've been here -- a family favorite, much to my son-in-law's horror).  Mike and Rachelle took the kids home about 8:30, but Mike showed back up at 11:00 p.m. to join the card game, which we were about to end.  Mike said he hadn't planned on stopping but saw the lights on, so he didn't want to miss the opportunity for the nightly card game.  So it was another late night (1:00 a.m.) before we got to bed.  And it's still raining.