This is not a river

It's a driveway.

There is a ravine (pictured below), maybe 8-10 feet deep, which sits between my house and the road. It is generally dry, but carries water after a heavy rain. It rushes with a pleasant waterfall sound, but I've never seen it more than about 5-6 feet deep. That is, until today.

My husband called while I was driving home from work, and told me that the driveway and the road were both underwater, that the creek had jumped them both. unsure what else to do, I headed home anyway.

I pulled off the main road into our little hollow, came around a curve and stopped. A rushing, muddy river blocked my way. I couldn't see around the curve to gauge how big a river I'd have to drive through, nor how deep it was. I'd repeatedly heard that you should never drive into something like that, always accompanied by a picture of an abandoned car whose driver thought he was just driving through a puddle, then found the water was up past the windows.

It's a hard road to back out of, narrow and winding, and there was no place to park without blocking what was left of the road. I shut off the car to think.

Meanwhile, a car pulled up behind me, drove around and went through the water. I saw it disappear around the curve, then waited. When nobody bailed out and no car was pulled into the raging creek next to the road, I followed. Even with the windows closed, I could smell the mud as I drove through.

After that, driving through the water running out of my driveway onto the road was a piece of cake. Even so, my driveway was impassable, as shown above. (Yes, that's a driveway, not a waterway). I parked at a neighbors house across the road, the braved the water rushing down the street to go up a different neighbors driveway and cut across to our own yard.

The water has receded enough to use the driveway and the road, but my car is still across the street. They are predicting another round of storms tomorrow morning. If the driveway washes out, it would be nice to have one car on the other side of the ravine.

And to think we had a party planned. It was supposed to be a cookout/bonfire. We'll make the call on whether we are canceling tomorrow morning, but my guess is that a lot of people won't be going anywhere. The south part of town got hit harder than we did. Interstate highways are closed, and so are many local roads.

Work has gotten crazy. We are all authorized to do overtime, and it has become common to just go home at some random time after your shift has ended, sometimes hours later. I wasn't even scheduled to work today at all, and I spent the morning training someone, who also didn't belong there, to do payroll.

Onward to sorting laundry.