I’m Back!!!!

Whew, 14 days & 1400 miles later and I am home.  We had so much fun on vacation, my kids were crying when we left. :-( 

Camping and boating are two of our favorite things and this year, we had a NEW 5th wheel to live in for these two weeks.  What a difference a year makes, last year we lived in a tiny 8' camper and it was certainly crowded with the four of us and the dog!!  Here is a shot of where I lived for the past two weeks.

The night of August 4th was one I will never forget.  We had just started eating dinner (at about 8:00pm) and the wind started howling through the campground.  We finished eating, cleaned up and started a small fire in the fire pit in my brother-in-laws camp spot that was back to back with my father-in-laws camp spot.  A bunch of us were standing around the fire watching the tops of the trees sway in the wind and we started talking about the possibility of one of the dead ones falling down.  Not ten minutes later, we heard a loud crack, looked up and saw a HUGE tree falling down in my father-in-laws camp.  We raced over there fearing the worst and saw that the tree had landed on my father-in-laws truck!!  There were 21 people in our group and you should have seen us scrambling around the campground, my nephew ran down to see if the campground host could bring his chain saw up, us gals were trying to account for everyone, the rest of the adults were running from their camp spots to see what happened and the little kids were crying. 

The campground host came up with his chain saw and started cutting the tree.  It stretched across the road and into the next camp spot, it was HUGE!!!!  It was nightfall when this happened so it got dark quick.  We had to pull our trucks around and turn the headlights on so he could see what he was cutting.

He cut through it on both sides of the truck and two of the guys lifted it off the truck. 

Here is a picture of the truck the next morning.  Thankfully, it only smashed the windshield and dented the hood.  The truck started right up and my father-in-law was able to contact a glass company 30 miles away and they made a service call to the campground to replace the windshield.

Here is the section of the tree that the guys lifted off the truck 

This shows the diameter of the tree, the only thing I had for comparison was a battery. 🙂

Here is the section of the tree where it cracked.  Apparently, it had some sort of root rot and was very vulnerable at the base.  It appeared healthy everywhere else.

Here is a distance shot so you can see how tall these trees really are.

What an eventful two weeks we had, I will miss Swan Lake but I am glad to be home as now I can continue unpacking from our move last month.

Here is a shot of the gorgeous scenery and my little five-year-old son water skiing.  This lake is surrounded by mountains so everywhere you look you see views like this.

I will be in my NEW stamp room this week so stay tuned for some of my creations. 🙂