This Thursday was Valentine’s Day and the campground put on a great dinner for those that wanted to attend. They had expected about 30 people, but the steady rain kept a few people away, but they still had about 21 attendees. They served shrimp scampi, salad and a great cherry crunch desert. The managers presented roses to everyone. Our table included Matt and Alita and Paul (the only single guy at the dinner). 🙂 It was a great time and great food!
These are our campground managers, Carrie and Ryan (over the sink in the background) and Suzie and Steve, the chefs.
Here are some other pics from our table and the decorations around the room.
Paul was sitting at our table, and his camper is parked at one of the sites next to the river. It had been raining ALL day and I kiddingly told Paul that maybe he wants to hook up his truck to his trailer just in case he has to move quickly. We have had that similar amount of rain in the past which caused some slight flooding of the river along the back of the park. It just was runover in the swampy area, not anything in danger of any of the sites.
Once we got back to our camper that night, I noticed that the Sedona Fire facebook page was indicating that Oak Creek would be nearing flood stage later that evening or in the early morning. In the middle of the night I happened to see that their facebook page was updated with pictures of Oak Creek flooding the roads….and Oak Creek feeds in to the Verde River that runs along the back of the campgrounds.
The next morning, I opened the door of the camper to take Max for a walk and could already hear the river right at our door which I have never heard that loud before!! I knew something was up so Max and I headed to the river. WOW, the river had risen at least 6 feet at that point. And considering just 3 hours earlier, the river overflow bed was dry!!!! One of the first campers we saw that looked like it was in trouble was Paul’s!! Three campers along the river had already been moved out — Hank and Jackie from Canada, who were planning to leave Friday morning anyways thought they would sleep in, but were forced to change those plans when Ryan knocked on their door and said they better get packed up to leave! Talking to both Hank and Paul, they said they watched as the river kept rising quite fast since about 8:30!! Here is what Paul’s trailer looked like when Max and I got down to the river — he moved just as the water was covering his back tires!!
This was the electrical box that Paul’s camper was plugged in to after the water had risen quite a bit!!
Back in the corner, was Russ and Sherry in the Class A, and their rig blocked the 5th wheel where the couple from South Dakota was staying. The woman in that was quite upset because she is blind and her husband had gone out earlier in the morning. As Russ and Sherry rushed to get everything picked up around their camper, some of the staff came over and loaded up what they could in the trucks to move them. The staff were also making plans on how to move the other trailer if the husband did not get home. He did arrive just as the staff was helping pick up their site and they helped him get hooked up to move to another site. Everyone pitched in to help these two groups move out of that corner of the campground as the water kept rising.
We walked back down the road to the cabins that are along the river. Those are all built up on stilts so no water got into the actual cabins but as you can see, trying to go up the front steps of some of them were now a challenge.
On this deck, those that were staying there and their friends from a couple other cabins decided to pop open a bottle of champagne letting the cork fly in to the flowing river and just sit back and watch the water rise!
These are pictures of what used to be the road that went along the river side campsites and there are about 8-10 campsites that are completely covered in water!
On the other side of the campground is a drainage ditch area that is open in some of the winter months and the campground uses that water as irrigation. Turns out there was so much water coming down, that this drainage ditch filled with water since the drainage gate overflowed. These are campers that are in the campgrounds behind us — you can see the water came pretty close to them too!
Because of this drainage filling, the water was flowing over there around the recreation building that is right next to our camper (our camper is on the far left on the picture below). So we were getting a little anxious watching this water rise and even prepared a little in case we needed to move. It rose for a good amount of time, but then about 1:00 as predicted the water started to stop rising! All of the campers in our area breathed a sigh of relief seeing that water finally stop rising.
Saturday we went out along the river to look at the damage and see how the water had lowered. The sites along the river, which are always a premium price, are pretty much trash with a great deal of erosion!! I think it will take a good amount of work to get those back in to a working and rentable shape.
Remember the cork popping on the deck? Here is that same area the next day — you can see how far down the river is at this point and this is still not back to normal!!
And now it looks like we may have more interesting weather this week!! Good chance of snow tonight (1-3 inches or more) and cold — here is what the week looks like for now.
And north of us, in Flagstaff and Sedona they are getting even more snow!! And that snow as it melts feeds into the creeks that feed in to the Verde River….so we are all wondering what the later part of the week may bring.
We had planned to take a trip to Lake Havasu this week, but will delay our plans just to keep an eye on the camper as they crazy weather moves in. Hopefully the weather will not be too crazy!!!
TIFN
Oh and sleep tight and don’t let the bed bugs bite!! 🙂
Dandy Ventures 