Despite the lack of posts to the blog lately, River Day is still alive and well. This week was the first return trip to the river since the big flood a few weeks ago. Jay, Ted, and I (Mark) were the only ones able to make it down. Temps were nice this week, low 60's, but overcast.
Although things didn't look nearly as bad as we expected, the flood aftermath was obvious; debris everywhere, lumber hanging in tree limbs, buildings torn open, toilets overturned, that sort of thing. We spent a good portion of the evening just picking stuff up in the immediate area of the camp and tossing it on the fire. A good bit of gravel was pushed up in front of the building, so we shoveled some of that out of the way and started spreading it out. There's a lot more to go, but we made a little dent in it. All but a few pieces of our woodpile were taken by the river, so we've started rebuilding that stack.
There was much discussion about the status of the building. It looks to have a few pieces of broken lumber in the framework, and the skids under the floor have been rotten for some time. There may be a new construction project in the near future, but that'll be up to Ron.
Once some of the mud dries up inside the port-a-potty, we should be able to shovel some of it out and make it light enough to stand back up. Floating around in the water caused it to dig into the sand pretty good, so that'll be another chore.
We did get short visits from some of the locals this week; both Leo and Freddy stopped by for a few minutes.
It was good to be back at the river.
Only the three "founding members" of the group were able to make it to the river this week: Ted, Jay and I (Mark), and I only made it because of a change of travel plans for the week. We had good weather, even if it was a little cool (low 40;s). The river level was also good, so Jay and both tried some fishing, both in front of the camp and down-river just below the camp. Neither of us caught anything, but I didn't have any real expectations that we would. Just getting warmed up for the "season".
There's still a good bit of cleanup to do around the camp from the recent flooding, especially the debris out in the yard. We've burned up all the large stuff; time to start raking up the small pieces now. One of the locals apparently took it upon himself to get the "blue room" uprighted. We're not sure exactly how he did it, but it's standing. As you can tell from the photo, the door didn't fare so well. Probably due to the weight of the mud and sand that was on it while it was laying face down. There's also a fairly large hole in the sand that was left behind.
Ted spend a good bit of the evening trying to get the inside of the building cleaned up. He swept, shoveled, and raked until he got nearly all of the sand, gravel and debris out of the shed. It actually looks pretty good, but the building itself definitely took a bad hit on this one.
Just the usual activity this week as far as the locals go: Leo arrived by Raleigh Express early in the afternoon, and Freddy dropped in for a visit after that.
