We awoke on the morning of July 3 without power, but to a beautiful day. The sky was sunny and blue with just a few big white fluffy clouds. The temperature was in the high 70s with a little breeze blowing from the north.
The ground was wet from the previous night's torrential rains and littered with branches of all sizes. Our back section of dock hung in lake, the flag pole was missing, as was one of our lawn chairs. Slowly, we all made our way outside to assess the carnage from the most damaging storm to hit northern Cass County in recent memory.
Luckily, we were spared serious damage. I began picking up the branches that lay strewn across the lawn, front and back. Jayden came outside and joined me in picking up branches. "Grandpa," my little 3-year old grandson said to me, "today's a good day for a clean up." He was right.
Jayden and I spent close to an hour picking up branches that ranged in size from little twigs to branches 10-inches in diameter and weighing 40 pounds or more. By the time we were done, I was soaked in sweat. The humidity was much higher than I originally suspected and the temperature had risen quickly and was up over 80 degrees. It was time for a swim in the lake. And I needed to look for the lawn chair and flag pole anyway, so going into the lake was something I needed to do.
Without electricity, we didn't have a well-pump. Without a working well-pump, we couldn't take showers. And since we were schedule to, and needed to, leave the lake for St. Cloud within a couple of hours, Ashley and Kathleen joined me in the lake for a "camp bath;" using biodegradable soap of course.
I was able to locate flag pole and managed to wrestle it onto the dock. I also found our lawn chair, although the headrest was missing and will probably never be found. While I was busy Kathleen and Ashley finished getting cleaned up and made their way to the house to get dressed and finish packing.
No sooner had I dried off the Kathleen cried out that the guys from Shore Brothers were here to fix our dock. Talk about fast service! The storm hit the previous night at 7:15 p.m. and by noon the following day Mark and his team were out helping people get their docks, boat lifts and other shoreline equipment back in order. Mark said his list of people who needed docks and/or boat lifts fixed was two-pages long.
In no time, the fast-working team from Shore Brothers had my dock back together and the flag pole back in its proper place. Interestingly, the stairs that Rick and I had attached earlier in the summer stayed in place and completely weathered the storm. I'm glad we did such a good job.
Mark waved goodbye and motored his barge/forklift north on Sucker Bay to assist the next person on his long list. We finished packing up.
Without electricity the food in our refrigerator and freezer wouldn't last much longer than a day and since we were heading down to St. Cloud today, and we had no idea when the power would come back on (it didn't come on until late-afternoon or July 6) we had to unload everything from both fridges, load as much food as we could take with us, and take the remaining frozen stuff down to the Malays.
Some time ago, Tom got a gas-powered electric generator and he was currently using it to keep his refrigerators and freezers working. Lainy offered some room in one of the big freezer units for us to store some of our frozen items.
Ashley climbed on the ATV to take a couple of big bags of frozen items down the Malays when Jayden came running out of the house crying. He wanted to come with us. I asked him if he wanted to climb onto the ATV with me and Ashley and he responded with "you betcha." Just a few weeks at Leech Lake and the little guy is already talking like a Minnesotan.
We unloaded the food at the Malays, came back to the house and finished packing. It was then time for Ashley, Melissa and Jayden to complete the difficult task -- saying goodbye to the lake for this summer. We're making our trip to St. Cloud so the kids can say goodbye to Grandma Nonnie (Kathleen's mom), the Coyles (Tim, Sandy, Conner and Jackson), and the Petersens (Kathleen's sister Mary, her husband David and their daughter Brita).
At last the truck was fully loaded with the kids luggage, our overnight bags, coolers of food and miscellaneous items. I started up the truck engine, cranked the air conditioning to high in hopes we might cool off, and slowly made our way down the driveway. The kids said goodbye to the house, cabin and lake and we were on our way south.
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The devastation we witnessed as we drove down Sucker Bay Road and Highway 2 was beyond description. Thousands of trees -- birch, pine, ash, basswood (linden), and maple -- were snapped in half, or completely up rooted. Trees of all sizes, from small saplings to huge 80-foot tall, had been toppled. It reminded me of the way broken weeds look after I've driven the ATV through a heavy patch of overgrowth back in the woods. Only these weren't weeds, they were fully mature trees.
All eight miles along Sucker Bay Road trees were downed on both sides of the road. The devastation continued along US Highway 2 as we drove west toward Cass Lake. On both sides of the road thousands of trees were broken off, snapped and otherwise destroyed.
Norway State Park/Campground was shut down, with hundreds of ancient red and white pines felled by the storm. The big sign out in front of Stony Point Resort was blown down and broken. Trees all along the biking trail leading into Cass Lake were cracked in half and lay bent over as if they were paying homage to the winds that howled through the night before.
The canopy of the Shell gas station in Cass Lake suffered serious damage and the entire city of Cass Lake remained without power.
By the time we were a few miles south of Cass Lake on Highway 371, evidence of the storm began to wane. There was an occasional tree down here or there, but nothing like the thousands of downed trees on Ottertail Peninsula and along Highway 2 into Cass Lake. And once in the small town of Walker -- located on the southern shores of Leech Lake -- everything appeared to be fine and normal. The town had power, there were no downed trees or power poles or any other visible damage from the storm.
We continued south on Hwy. 371 toward St. Cloud. We did make a stop in the tiny town of Nisswa, where there are dozens of little shops and businesses devoted to selling tourists a taste of the Northwoods. The kids love stopping here to buy souvenirs for their friends and to pick up a couple of little items for themselves. As it turned out, the town of Nisswa was hosting its Fourth of July parade a day early, and it was set to begin at 7:00 p.m., just two hours after our arrival in town.
We didn't think we'd stick around for the parade, but because of it the town was full of people, many more than the average number of summertime tourists. I found a place to park the truck and we all made our way down the quaint main street that runs through the heart of the small village.
It was, unfortunately, unbearably hot. The temperature was in the mid-90s and the humidity was up around 75%. Everyone in town was overheated and was seeking shelter in the air conditioned shops that lined both sides of the main street.
We were in only our second store when suddenly the lights went out. The proprietor of the store quickly had everyone shuffle out of the cool, and now dark, confines of his shop back into the sweltering hot sunlight. We went next door to the next little shop, but it too was shuttered due to the power outage.
We went across the street to get an ice cream cone at the semi-famous Chocolate Ox, but it was also shooing people away and locking its doors. Apparently the overload of all the shops cranking their air conditioning and the incredible heat of the day blew out the power in the entire town of Nisswa, and just 90 minutes before the town's big Fourth of July parade.
Deciding it was best to keep moving on toward St. Cloud, we all went back to the truck, backed out, waited for the traffic cops to wave us through the now dark traffic signal and out onto the highway. Once again we were driving south toward St. Cloud.
At last, we made it to Kathleen's mom's house, unloaded the truck, put away the food we had brought with us in coolers, unpacked a bit and settled in. It had been a long day and everyone was tired so we went to bed early. With the heat expected to be in the mid-90s again on July 4, and with extremely high humidity, we decided to skip going to the Fourth of July parade in St. Joseph in the morning, and instead, waited until after dark to take Marge to see the fireworks over the Mississippi River in downtown St. Cloud.
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We had a wonderful Fourth of July holiday, spending time with Marge Coyle at her house with Kathleen's sister Mary and her husband and daughter, Tim and Sandy and their boys, plus our family. At sunset we drove downtown St. Cloud and found a spot on a bridge over the Mississippi River to watch the fireworks. As it turned out, there was a tornado watch for the area as well as a thunderstorm warning, so we saw man-made fireworks in one part of the sky and a spectacular natural lightning show in another.
The next day, Mary and her crew, as well as our family, all drove up to Nisswa so the kids could get in a little souvenir shopping. The power was back on in the city and we spent the better part of five hours shopping, having pizza and just enjoying each other's company. Melissa and I spent most of the time keeping Jayden occupied since shopping and a three year old don't really mix.
By the evening of July 5, Mary and her family went back down to the Twin Cities, and we focused our attention on spending time with Kathleen's mom. Ashley flies back to CA in just a couple of days, and she wants to see her great-grandma as much as possible.
More in the "Departures" post.
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