Stamping with Nanna: OBX 2016 ... An 'Interesting Vacation' ... Part 2, The Storm

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

OBX 2016 ... An 'Interesting Vacation' ... Part 2, The Storm

Well, here's the scary part of my tale.

The OBX part of the hurricane hit us on Saturday evening, after we'd arrive earlier that same day. It started up around 10:00 or 11:00 that night. It was incredibly windy and the rain was pouring down like crazy. Around midnight, I got up for a little visit down the hall. As I put my hand on the edge of the door frame, the power went out. I was able to feel my way back to the night stand and get my phone. I turned on the flashlight feature but you couldn't see anything outside at all. Usually, when the lights go out, after your eyes adjust, you can see faint images. Not this night. Everything was black as black could be.

The wind picked up and the rain lashed the house as I've never heard either before. The house was up on 'stilts' of course, with our Highlander parked beneath it. I was terrified. The trees outside the bedroom windows kept hitting the house and the roof and the sound was terrible. I kept screaming out each time the wind shook the house ... just couldn't help it. It felt like the corner of the bedroom was going to be torn off and blown away into the night. We ended up huddled together on the little couch in the living room. The storm lasted all night. At 8:00 the next morning, the power came back on, so that was a happy event.

Now, besides just plain being stupid enough to go ahead with our vacation, when Saturday night came, Bill decided that he'd go to the store Sunday morning. Well, come Sunday morning, we were stranded. Our house looked (and felt) like we were plopped down in the middle of a lake. I was scared that the water was up over the bottom of the car doors, but it wasn't. We got in the car later that day, after wading to it through all the water, and drove to the store. The store was close or we couldn't have made it. It was closed, of course. Everything was. There was only one little section that we could get to and it looked totally deserted. Of course, the only food we had to get through Sunday was our left-over pizza and remaining car snacks.

On Monday, the store was still closed. We found a place to eat breakfast and then checked back later and the store was open ... sort of. All the shelves of fresh product, deli meats, etc. were all totally empty. The meat sections had blinds covering them. All the frozen food and dairy sections had 'crime scene' tapes over them. We were able to get other items and ended up eating out a couple of meals a day. It was eerie seeing so few other people and all the water closing us in. I felt really bad that the grocery store had had to throw away thousands of dollars worth of spoiled food.

Each day we were there, we saw a few more places open and more people coming out and about. We weren't able to get to Duck until about Thursday. By then, we needed to get to an Urgent Care place to have them look at my poor, wounded leg. More on that later. Here are some shots of the water everywhere.

These are views from around our beach house. I took them from up on our deck.

Below, these are streets ... at an intersection ... by our beach house.

You can go down the steps and right into our 'swimming pool' area ... what used to be our driveway.

Below, this is NOT a pond. This is someone's back yard. The water goes completely under their house.

Below, the shopping area where we like to browse through lots of cute little shops is up on 'stilts' and there is parking underneath it. After the storm, it was totally flooded.

These are the exposed roots of a big tree that was toppled, near one of our favorite places to go for a steak dinner. Lucky for us, they were open after a few days and we enjoyed a couple of really nice dinners there.