Moving Back, Again.
October 2008
We had pretty good warning about the coming of Gustav this year. At the time, it appeared there were a couple more lined up behind and following it too, Ike and Josephine. So that made a pretty good case that moving out temporarily was a good idea and it turned out to be true. I had traveled to Michigan a couple of days before to visit my sister, who was recuperating from recent hip replacement surgery. So after I returned from that, I began my trek to Bay St Louis to move the camper and other stuff out to a safe place for least a couple of weeks. Dale, Jim's ex-wife, had just moved into a new mobile home in the country in Mississippi near a small settlement named Crossroads. I had been there before and she asked me to bring her some shelving and other stuff the next time I visited. She also said I could bring the camper over and leave it as long as I wanted. So that worked out pretty well. And I picked up the materials she asked for and went to the Bay on Friday, August 29th. Saturday, I got the camper ready to go, loaded up the lawnmower in the bed of the truck and put the extra honey inventory ( about 35 gallons) inside the camper on the floor. It was pretty easy to disconnect everything, hookup, pull out and hit the road. Dale's place is about 60 miles from the Bay and it took a little over an hour to get there. She was expecting me and when I arrived at the gate, she was on her new riding lawnmower. So I just followed her in to her place and found a good place to leave the camper. One of her cousins, Jerry, lives next door. He came over and insisted that I leave my lawnmower inside his shed, out of the impending rainstorm. So I the drove to his place and unloaded the lawnmower there. The next day Sunday, I returned to Huntsville and began watching the progress of the hurricanes. The trip back was challenging because the whole coastal area was evacuating too. Notwithstanding the bumper to bumper traffic on the Interstate after I started out, I ran into a parking lot about 20 miles south of Meridian, MS. I checked the GPS map and discovered Highway 11 ran parallel to the Interstate and actually intersected it at Meridian. So I cut across the median and returned back to the first exit I came to and when over a mile or so to Highway 11. It was virtually free of traffic and I made good time all the way to Meridian There I returned to the Interstate. Things were going rather well for awhile until I got to about 10 miles south of Tuscaloosa. then I ran into another parking lot. Again, I consulted the GPS map and discovered an alternate combination of roads that would take me around Tuscaloosa and return me to the Interstate beyond the city. That worked out very well also. And I finally arrived home in Huntsville almost on schedule. The next day I began harvesting the fall crop of honey. After drying out the honey supers for a few days, I began the extracting process. I didn't get as good a crop as I had planned on, only about 100 gallons or so. But it was typical of what the other beekeepers in the area experienced this year.
Back to the hurricanes, Gustav brought about 9 feet of water into the area of the camp. So the camper and the lawnmower would have been inundated. Ike brought in about 7 feet of water, but it came in unexpectedly early and caught a lot of the residents off guard. As a result they did not have enough time to get their vehicles out and so many suffered loss of vehicles and other recreational equipment that got inundated by the flood waters from the hurricane Ike. Josephine was a no show in the area, so we escaped that bullet.
Here is a photo recording the high water mark of Gustav inside the shed. I had already moved the lawnmower back and also moved some bee boxes out of the way. The high water mark is hard to see, but it is one row of siding above where the x is formed by the metal side wall supports. So had the lawnmower been inside, it would have been completely covered with water.
This is the view of the other side of the shed. The bee boxes were scattered all over the floor by the flood water. I had them neatly stacked and prepared for winter storage before the hurricane. Now I will have to wash and clean out the boxes along with their frames before using them again next spring. The laundry tub was knocked off it's stand, but I replaced it before taking this photo.
This is a photo of Dale on her new SCAG zero- turn mower. She' not actually cutting grass in this photo. It is stored here when she is not using it and I just wanted a photo of it with her on it. Her new mobile home with the new metal roof and porch is in the background.
Here is the camper ready to return to Bay St Louis. The lawnmower is in the truck bed and we are ready to roll.
This photo was taken when I arrived back at the Camp and before I moved the camper in its final place under the metal roofing. Surprisingly, the metal roofing was undamaged by either hurricane, Gustav or Ike, though the winds did knock some trees down. I'll show one in one of the next photos.
The camper is now back in place and hooked up, ready to use again. My neighbor was a great help putting the camper exactly where it formerly was. The high water level at the camper was just below the electric meter on the temporary pole next to the camper. The circuit breakers and GFI receptacles were inundated and the GFI receptacles both here and on the boat house deck need to be replaced. The circuit breakers all appeared to function properly.
Here is some wind damage from Gustav. The cypress tree at the left across the canal lost its upper half and it ended up in the middle of the canal just to the left of the deck railing. We are going to have to figure some way to drag it out before we can navigate in the canal.
This last photo shows the boathouse was undamaged by the wind but the GFI receptacles are not functioning and need to be replaced. The hoist motors are working though and appear not to have suffered any from the storm. My neighbor tied his shrimp boat to the boathouse to ride out the storm. It was undamaged also. First thing I need to do now is crank up the lawnmower and cut the grass the next time I'm down there.