Cedar Rapids Flooding

I saw something today in an email that brought tears to my eyes. I am going to share the pictures here even though I do not know who, if anyone, claims the copyright. If the one who owns the copyright sees this and wants me to take it down or give credit, etc. please contact me at the above email address.

These are from Cedar Rapids, Iowa; however, the scenario is repeated in so many places. Half of the counties of our own state have been declared disaster areas. Thankfully, I don't live in one of those counties. But I could be in this situation. I don't live all that far from a major river myself.

PLEASE...pray for these people and all the ones like it across the flooded parts of our nation! Thank God for what you have! If you don't know Him...turn to Him now. This world is winding down. The most important relationship you can have is with Him. That is the ONLY one that will last throughout eternity.

Lower Driveway Flooding!

Standing in the lower driveway and looking at where the meadow water is running into it.










Looking toward the creek.


Amazingly, our wheel barrow did not get washed away! Yay!




This is where the lower driveway goes down into the creek!

Meadow Water Meets Driveway!

I am standing part way up our driveway and looking at where the meadow, on the left, meets the driveway. You can see the channels going down the driveway. I will have more pics of that later.


We have a channel dug to keep the water from the meadow off the driveway, but there is too much water.





This is one of the channels of water running through the meadow toward the driveway, which you can see in the background.



This is the lower driveway right before it goes down into the creek. The strip of brown you see in the background above the other side of the driveway at the bend is the creek.

Water in the Meadow!

We typically have water running through our meadow during heavy or long rains. That is not bad. We have done some trenching and it drains off fairly fast and runs along the side of the driveway. Until these latest storms!

During a normal rain the water is about 4 feet or so wide. The second storm it was about 6 feet wide. The third storm I have these pictures from. It is difficult to see how wide the swath of water is, but think on terms of about 15 to 20 feet. The first two pictures are from our RV window.

If you look closely, you will see water clear over in front of the bird cage. There is NEVER typically water running there even during a heavy rain.

I tried to get a picture of the creek from the RV, but the brush is too thick to see it. The creek bank goes down quite a bit, yet I could see the top of the water rushing through the creek. It has to be almost over its banks for me to see that.

This is a picture of the flattened grass, which was standing about 3 feet or so high. I am halfway across our meadow and facing the neighbors property and home. Part of the water you see is runoff from his hillside.


Here, I am looking back toward our driveway and our other neighbor, whose home you cannot see.

Lord Willing & the Creek Don't Rise!

Phew! I don't know that I ever thought that phrase would become so real to me. However, since moving onto our land, there are several times when "the creek don't rise" portion has been very real.

I think it was only 3 times last winter that we could not get across the creek. I remember one time Dave could not get home, so he went back to work and spent the night there. Another time I tried, unsuccessfully, to throw his mudders across the creek to him. The first one went downstream and I held onto the second one!

What we did get across the creek was a stick with a rope attached. Dave tied it on one side and I tied it on the other. Then he pulled himself across the creek, getting soaked in icy water in the process. Wet shoes and socks! Wet pants! In fact, the mudders would not have kept him dry...they would have simply allowed him to take off his shoes and keep them dry by carrying them. The force of the water went way up his legs.

At some point, Dave decided to look for a creekside tree to fell so that it would lay across the creek. Admittedly, it is not the best way to get over the creek, but we figured, "hey...in a pinch!" So, off he went with a friend to find one. After felling it, they tied a rope above it so that we had something to hold onto while we crossed. It is not a very wide tree, but it is plenty strong enough. We tried crossing on it. One has to be VERY careful using it to cross, even with the rope.

If the creek is high enough to need to use it, there is still all the water flowing into our meadow from the neighbor's property and the hillside gully to get across, too. It is a bit tricky, but we figured we could do if we really had to. It beats trying to walk through swiftly flowing water that might contain a branch that could slam into us.

This winter, we have been pretty blessed. In spite of the rains, we have been able to get across the creek...until last week. My son and I are going to a home school co-op one day a week. Last week it was raining hard so Dave parked across the creek, just in case it got too high to drive across.

We have cement blocks and pile of rocks to use to walk across onwhen the creek. When it rains really hard, though, the blocks and rocks get buried enough to make it so that we cannot walk across, even when we can still drive across. Well, last week there was no way we could walk it and it is good thing he parked on the other side because he could not have driven it, either.

So, we slogged on over to the new neighbors property. Someone bought the property next to ours and is in the process of putting in a double wide. Part of that package was to build a crossing over the creek. So, we carefully picked our way across the wet meadow over to their property to walk across to the road and back over to the van. That was not too bad, other than the water running into our meadow.

This week, however, it was really bad again. We had our mudders on this time, though. We were prepared! And it is a good thing. We noticed that the water in our meadow was more than usual. As we approached the neighbors property we could see why. His creek crossing was dammed up. You could see the tree limbs sticking up above the road. The water was level with the driveway on one side and barely coming through on the other.

Usually, creek crossings are made a little bit lower than the driveway height so that any overflow just flows evenly across. This was built even with the driveway. So, instead of flowing smoothly over, it was being diverted onto his property at one end of the crossing and flooding it. As it went down the other side it was eating away at the crossing and causing a whole torrent of water to flow along the creek and over to the meadow with some of it going back into the creek on the other side of the crossing. If we had not had our mudders on, we would not have made it through the flooding water to get to the crossing and the road.

So, two weeks in a row, we had our exercise before we even got into the van! But we made it! Thankfully, in spite of some continued heavy rains later in the day, the water was able to do down at our driveway which allowed us to actually drive across. Typically, when the water runs that heavily through the creek, we have some undercutting on one side of our crossing and there is some repair that needs to be done before Dave can drive across. But, thank Yahweh, we were able to drive right across!

We truly believe this is an answer to prayer. We had faithful friends praying with us that we would be able to get home. Not only did we get home...we were able to drive right across! Woohoo!