I'm homeless! (pics included)

Well, folks, we are homeless. Seriously. We had the worst ice storm ever and evacuated yesterday morning.

It began in the afternoon on Thursday. We all went home from school. Then, around 8:00 pm the power went out. We took out our heaviest down blanket and burrowed in for the night. But sleep was not easy. Every few minutes we heard a tree snap and break and fall to the ground. The ice made it especially noisy, and it sounded like a war was going on around us. Joe was worried about a tree coming in through the roof. I'm happy to say that didn't happen.

We had a transistor radio which came in real handy in the morning for me. I wake up at 5 and it's pitch-black out. So I found a local station and listened till I could find out my school was closed.

When daylight came, we could see just how bad it was, so we decided to try to leave. Trees were down everywhere and we saw a neighbor from the other side of the neighborhood seeming to be looking for an exit in his truck. Not a good sign.

Joe ventured out and found an escape route out of the immediate area. Good enough to decide to risk it and try to leave. En route out of the neighborhood, we saw a neighbor who is a part time police officer in town. He said he heard it may be weeks before we get the power back in our area.

This was the road we took to get out of our neighborhood. The other one was impassable.


These pics are the main road that gets you near the highway. We were in a little caravan of large vehicles. Luckily, Joe has a 4-wheel drive truck. Between the truck and a whole lot of desperation we made it through 15 miles of this to a safer place.






Once we got to the highway we were free and made it to the first open gas station, filled up, and continued south.

So we are staying with some very generous friends about one and 3/4 hours from our home. They have an efficiency apartment above their garage. I am so grateful and feel so fortunate to have this to escape to.

I'm spending time wondering how long it will be before my school has power and I'll either also have power at home, or I'll have to drive 2 hours to work. Only time will tell!