Living in the high desert means having to deal with long periods of dry weather punctuated by periods of mega-rains. We got one of those yesterday. I was not at the skycastle when this occurred, I was at a friend’s house. My drive home was a bit tricky, our roads are dirt, some gravel, some boulders and several places are clay. The clay is the problem, when it gets wet, soaked, it becomes a car eating muck pit. There are several places I have to cross that have lots of clay, one place in particular is a S-curve just before my place, I avoid it when it’s wet. That means going over an even steeper, higher, rougher road, but it’s worth it to miss the mucky S-curve. As I was going over the alternate path, I noticed a couple of cars that were abandoned on the road, not a pleasant thing to see where I live. That usually means a long, rough walk for the occupants, unless they are lucky enough to find someone else driving though or are close enough to walk to a friend’s house, that usually means at least a half mile or more walking either up or down steep hills. Did I mention that cell phones don’t work out here?
I didn’t recognize one of the cars, but the other one I knew who it belonged to, and I found out that he got a ride home with someone. The reason they left their vehicles was because the road was washed out in several places and they wouldn’t have made it home. I barely did, once I got home, I found that most of my road farther down was completely gone, my neighbor’s bridge was damaged by several trees that washed down the creek and jammed into the bridge. PB spent several hours cutting and removing the wood and other debris from the bridge. My neighbor lost most of the gravel from his driveway. I spent some time walking around with a video camera documenting the aftermath of the rain. Watch and enjoy, remember this is in the desert. :) There are 12 short videos, they will play one after another.
If you have already purchased Nicks new book, or you are about to, be sure to check out chapter 9, PB and I are featured in that chapter.
Read more about our off-grid life here: https://off-grid.net/section/wretha/