My last doctor follow-up visit for 6 months was today. I expected a "How are you doing?" question or two on this visit... and that's how it played out. Really, I could have phoned it in. The Nurse Practitioner told me I am good to travel, as long as I take frequent breaks so I am not sitting in one position for hours on end. We can now start to make some plans, but probably nothing right away.
We had some other plans for our trip to the big city of Harlingen: a leisurely lunch out and a visit to our storage unit, which is just north of town. That area had a lot of rain on Monday night. And, by "a lot," I mean they received about 14" of rain. Of course, there was flooding - there is always flooding somewhere in the Valley when there are big rains (flat terrain and poor drainage). It was fairly localized, and I was told the water at our storage unit came up to the concrete pad, but "probably" didn't get inside the unit. Just north and west of there, power is out and roads are still flooded.
We decided to stay on the main highway to get to our storage unit, believing that the road was OK to travel on. It didn't work out that way. We drove through two areas on that highway that had water over the road, not quite up to the axles...
Two miles from the storage unit, there were barracades across the highway, and the water was still rising...
We did a U-turn and drove back through the two areas of water over the road, and to the freeway. South, then east, then north again, to find a road that would get us around the closed area. One mile from our storage unit, it looked like a different situation: there was water in the ditches and fields, but it wasn't up to the level of the road.
When we were watching local weather reports for Monday night's rain, it looked like the heaviest of the rain was just west of our storage unit... according to the weasels, 14" north and west of Harlingen, about 5 to 6" where our storage unit is. Just a couple miles apart.
We made it to the storage unit, opened the door and... no evidence of water getting in. I think we lucked out. We looked around the unit - all good. Joan went in the motorhome while I sprayed for bugs in the unit. We are good to go for a while.
Coming back home, we were headed east - it is surprising how a mile or two makes such a big difference in the amount of rain, evidenced by less and less water in the ditches. Here at the coast, I'm guessing we had maybe an inch of rain at most from that storm. Living on this island, rain can run off, so flooding from rain isn't much of an issue... now, storm surge from high tides and a hurricane - that is a problem. It is early in "hurricane season," but I hope Mother Nature cuts us some slack... after all, it seems that she has been taking it out on the states across the middle of the country for the last two months.
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