Exciting night - Day 561 (Yr 2, Day 180)

Asheville, NC

It all started at almost 1:00 am, when we received a call from Mitch's sister Jane.  The only time anyone in the family ever calls at odd hours is when (G-d forbid!) there is an emergency.  So seeing her name pop up on caller ID gave us both a big scare.  Turns out she is in CA visiting her kids and accidentally pocket (or butt) dialed us.  Big, big relief.

We fell back to sleep and were awakened again around 3:00 am by loud voices and a truck engine.  We looked out the window to see one of the RVs trying to find a spot to park in.  Upon further investigation, we realized that the river had overflowed its banks (if you refer to my previous post, we heard about the flood watches on Friday and decided to move to the other side of the campground then - a decision we're very happy we made.  Even though it remained safe through the weekend, there was even more heavy rain, with more on the way over the next few days).

We went outside to discover that everybody else on the river side had evacuated, either to this side or left the campground.  I'm sure there must have been a lot of commotion, and I have no clue how both of us managed to sleep through it.   In front of our site, the water was a little past the halfway point between the river side and our side (about 10 more feet to go to reach us), but it was up against the pads a few sites down.  The weather reports were warning that the river would continue to rise until about 5:15 am before it would start to recede.  So we had a dilemma: stay put or evacuate?  The owner, as well as 2 permanent residents here (who have a lot of experience with this) said that although it was a gamble, chances were very slim that we would get flooded on our side.  They felt the worst that would happen is the water would reach the front of our site, but even if it did go beyond that (to the very back), it was only standing water, not a raging river, and we were high enough off the ground and the water level would never rise that high.  So we took the chance and decided to stay.

By 8:30 this morning the water had receded back to a few inches below the bank, and now (at noon) it is a few feet below.  The campground staff is busy cleaning up all the debris that the water brought along with it.

Still a lot to be grateful for besides having the foresight to move earlier rather than once the water rose and in the dark and when everyone else was moving, but also this week has brought many, many tornadoes in the southern states (hardest hit: TX and MS) with as many as 25 deaths from those very severe storms.  The rain we've had is part of that storm system, but we only had to deal with the flooding.