California Storm

Our power has been off a lot more than it's been on. The first time a day and a half and then it came back on for about 10 hours and then off again for over 24 hours. It makes you very grateful to have the electricity! I have to remember to always be grateful, even when we pay an exorbitant amount to have it! We survive though by having a wood stove, three fireplaces, oil lamps, a propane cook top so we can cook, and lots of candles and games to play and books to read. It's a different life. One downside is "no hot water" so if it gets to be too many days you have to sponge bathe or leave the house if the roads are open and find somewhere you can take a shower!! Oh and then we have to get the ice into the cooler to save the items we can from the refrigerator, forget the freezer stuff, ice cream turned to milkshake, soggy meatballs (eww!), you get the picture. We're looking into investing in solar. We live in a perfect place to do that. One more good thing, we have gravity flow, so we have water and can flush toilets, we just don't have the hot water.


There were so many downed telephone poles and trees. The winds were so high. Here in the mountains they were said to be near hurricane force. 150-169 mile an hour gusts!! I believe it. The huge redwood trees looked like toothpicks ready to snap.

The ground is so saturated that trees still fall over taking power lines down with them, or the wind comes back up dropping branches onto the lines and there goes the power. More rain predicted today and tomorrow.

But this is mountain living. And if we can't get to town then we deal with that. It's so beautiful and peaceful and that's why we live here and deal with the forces of nature when they come.

So for now I have power and the Internet (which by the way was down for over 2days because they had three towers blow over) and I'll be back in touch to clean up my blog when I feel more comfortable that the power isn't going to shut off.