Flood!

Not everything goes as planned all comfy and rosey, danger can occur at any time. Our first real volunteer assignment was at Lafayette Blue Springs State Park in Florida. This park is along the Suwannee River and within 5 days of our arrival, heavy rains caused the river to rise. We were forced to evacuate and we did not return since it would be a long time before the park was back operational. The river rose way over it's banks.

In Destin,Fl at the beautiful park of Camp Gulf a massive 20 inch rain fell in one night. We were woke up at 4:15 AM by a friend who told us the water was quickly rising in the park. Our site was flooding and it had never flooded before. I am standing in knee deep water by our motorhome, still raining hard, and lightning all around. Now, I have to stand in this water and unhook all utilities so we can escape the rising water. As I stand in water, with lightning striking close, I have to unplug our 50 amp power supply from the electric pedestal and I literally wondered if this will be the last thing I do. Electrocution crossed my mind! Soaked and cold, we got unhooked and drove to higher ground, yes it was a scary time for us.

This is our site 308 at Camp Gulf, the water was deeper prior to this picture .

The pond at Camp Gulf really overflowed. This road goes downhill, but you can't tell because the water is so deep. People at the bottom we stranded for a few days, rigs could not come or go. People were not really in any imminent danger, just could not drive their RVs out of that portion of the park. 5 cars that were parked at the bath house were heavily damaged by flood waters.

Bath house 3

But after all that rain, we get to enjoy the rainbow after the storm. We found the end of the rainbow a couple of times, but have yet to find the traditional pot of gold. We saw this rainbow while working in Las Vegas at the Clark County Shooting Park. The adventures are our real pot of gold.

The water at our Camp Gulf site was so deep we had to protect what we could by storing it on the picnic table.

Some of the guests decided to chance it and drive through the flood waters to get out of the park. More than one rig got water in their storage compartments, but hopefully they got them all dried out before too much damage could occur.

We ran large pumps for a couple of weeks pumping flood water out into the Gulf of Mexico, A special permit had to be obtained, but there was no place else to pump it to.