Water Everywhere

     It was wonderful to listen to the sound of rain falling on our rooftop all night long.  I had a sound sleep and didn’t even have one nightmare about forest fires.  I must have been sleeping really good because I hit the snooze button without even realizing it.  How can that happen?  Anyway, I still had plenty of time to get the kids ready for school and make it to the bus stop on time. 

     The kids and I noticed all of the new streams and gullies as we drove the mile out to the Gunflint Trail.  Water was pouring down the hills creating waterfalls, rivers and puddles everywhere.  I’m not sure why I didn’t think about the boats needing to be bailed, but I didn’t.  After dropping the kids off I made my way over to a cabin that needed to be cleaned for the weekend.  

  Mike needed me at home by 8 am because we had a tow to go out and he had a conference call.  When I made it back it was exactly 8 o’clock and I decided to take a quick look at the water running into the river.  "Holy buckets!"  The water had risen at least half of a foot since the day before and the boats were nearly sunk. I quickly began bailing the tow boat with the automatic pump and grabbed a five gallon bucket.  All of the boats were on the verge of being filled with water and I couldn’t stand in any of them because my added weight would put it under.

     I had to be at a meeting at 9 o’clock so I passed the job of bailing boats onto a crew member.  I went into the store and lo and behold there was water everywhere.  The rock we have in the store allows water to run down it like a waterfall when the ground is saturated or frozen.  We get water in there in the spring and if it rains really hard.  It obviously had rained very hard and there was water everywhere.  Since I needed to get going I passed the buck on shop vaccuuming up all of the water onto another Crew member.

     My meeting was a couple of hours long and when I got home Adam was just finishing up bailing all of the boats.  Can you imagine?  It was after noon and he was just finishing!  The Seagull Guard Station said we received 3.9 inches of rain, but I’m pretty sure we got a little bit more than that based on previous rainfall measurements and the amount of water in our boats.  The water had risen another 6 inches while I was gone and it’s still pouring into the river as I write.

     It’s amazing how much rain Mother Nature can give us in a short amount of time when she wants to.  The water levels are up there with spring levels and that makes me very happy!