Cottage Time 2017 – Part 2

My parents rent a cottage for the first 3 weeks of July and Hannah and I enjoy going up to visit them each weekend.

The second weekend we drove up Friday evening after I finished work.  While we drove in beautiful sun most of the time, weather announcements on the radio often told me that there was a number of severe storms brewing around us.

About 20 minutes before we arrived at the cottage I suddenly began receiving texts from family asking where we were and if we were okay.  We were under a bit of cloud but there was sun all around us.

As we got closer to the cottage it became clear that quite a storm had just gone through.  It ended up being a localized storm but for as quickly as it came and went it left quite a bit of damage behind.  My friend TL had her car parked near the dining hall and after the storm this was what she found!

It’s hard to see here but my SIL took this picture from inside the chapel.  At this point they could not open the doors to the outside as almost a foot of water had quickly accumulated when the rain and hail fell.  You can see the benches in the back and how high the water was on their legs.

As we were within about 1 km of the cottage the roads and cottages got dark indicating the power was out.  Normally this isn’t much more than an inconvenience but it’s a challenge for me as I have sleep apnea so I must sleep with a CPAP machine.  No power = a rough night with many episodes of wakefulness and choking.  Ugh!

Thankfully my dad called to say that Dan, the cottage owner was going to bring an extension cord from his generator down the 50’ hill to our cottage so that I would have power for ‘Darth’, my CPAP machine.   I was SO thankful for this as I really didn’t know what I would have done.  (Possibly had to turn around and drive the 2 hours back home.)  History has proven that power going out at the cottage is never a short lived experience and it often lasts hours. 

Even though we were oh-so-close to the cottage it would take us another 60+ mins. to get there as the storm had washed out the road and hill that I needed to get to mom and dad.  Thankfully the staff at the camp were quickly on cleanup and they graded a little bit of the road and hill to allow traffic to get through.   (This picture was taken the following morning showing the machinery used to re-grade the hill….a second time!  They had almost graded the hill the first time when the second storm hit and washed away all of their work! )

Hannah and I finally reached the cottage around 11pm, gathered essentials from the car and made our way down to the cottage.  We chatted with mom and dad for a bit but then quickly called it a night.  There was a second thunder storm that went through that produced a lightening storm like I’ve never seen before!  2 solid hours of thunder and lightening every few seconds was surreal.  (Can you believe I didn’t even think to take video of it?  D’oh!!)  The storm finally passed around 2 am and I was able to sleep.  Thankfully Hannah slept through the entire storm!

Here’s a video of the first storm that my dad took from inside their cottage.  The white things in the air are pieces of hail.  It was about an inch deep everywhere once the storm passed.

The next morning we woke to a beautiful sunny morning but still did not have power so Hannah and I went on an adventure into town and picked up a shareable box of coffee and went to share it with family and friends around the camp.  Let’s just say we were pretty popular!  (Again, no pictures.  You can tell how everything was just a little out of sorts.)

Although the skies were sunny it was easy to see that something had happened the night before.

Dan and Marg’s hill between their house and the cottage is filled with beautiful hostas.  This picture was taken a few years ago.

This is a close-up of one of the hostas the day after the storm.  Sadly all of them looked like this!  They had all been shredded by the hail.

No power led to creativity.  Kallen created a decoration with the water bottles and played a game of ‘jump over the water bottles.’

No power also meant no water so we used buckets of lake water to flush occasionally.  LOL!

Thankfully the sun stayed out so we had a great day outside.

In the end the power was off for almost 30 hours!  It’s safe to say we were excited when it was back on at 1am Sunday morning.  Sunday also became the day that many BBQed everything in their freezers that had thawed during the storm.  Thankfully mom and dad didn’t lose anything as theirs was plugged into the generator.

Ah, cottage life.  Mainly wonderful and amazing but occasionally a little challenging too.  A weekend with a story though, that’s for sure!