Home and then Rain

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a little blog about my time away from home and how awesome it was to come back home again.
Well...
That was only temporary.

Kari and River and I have been forced out of our home because of a little bit of rain.
A little bit of rain is a bit of a joke. I'm not sure how the national news is covering it, but Middle Tennessee got around 15 inches of rain in two days. This came a week after we had a good soaking the week before. Needless to say there was quite a bit of flooding. Downtown Nashville was flooded all the way up to 2nd Ave. Opryland Hotel and Opry Mills Mall had 10 ft of water inside. The Grand Ole Opry was flooded above the stage. Thousands of homes were flooded and people left with nothing.
Luckily our house was spared from the flooding and even the damage from the storm. Unfortunately our road and our power was not.
The road to our house was washed out by overflow from an old (used to be dry) irrigation pond. I ended up having to carry Kari, River, and Chaco across the wash out with rushing water up to my shins on Sunday evening when it became apparent that we wouldn't have power for a long while. There are power lines down in at least 6 places on our road and a power pole was snapped at the base at one of those places. The power company here has lost something like 80% of their truck fleet to flood waters, so getting power back is going to take a long time. We lost power on Saturday and it is Thursday and there hasn't even been anyone back to look at the lines. So in the mean time, we are staying in Spring Hill with Kari's parents.
I tell River that we will still be talking about this flood in 10 years but that he won't even remember it. When I was a young lad (maybe 6?) I was in Virginia and we had a massive flood. I don't remember much about it except my school bus getting stuck, my basement getting flooded and going to MawMaw and PawPaw's house.
Kari is doing well with coping, being forced out of her home for a while. Our solace is that we are able to return to it once power is restored. Many around us no longer have homes. It is a strange feeling not being able to go to the place you are most comfortable.
So two weeks ago or so I was rejoicing in being able to return home and was ready for life to return to the normal hustle and bustle of things. The normal hustle and bustle turned out to be quite different than I remembered! Ha!

The road to our house...or what was left of it.

The road to our house a few days later

My bosses driveway during the rain.

More trees across the power lines.

Lots and lots of trees down. We had around 15 Rangers from all over the state come out and help clean up on Monday! Thanks guys!

More trees

Road collapsed inside of park. The State Trails Administrator is there for size perspective.

Almost looks like an earthquake more than rain

The road to enter the park on the side our house is on.

The lake is usually not that color.