Vermont Diary - Part 1 - Enter Irene

This year’s Vermont vacation at Camp Nana (and Poppy) started off uneventfully enough... flight ok (Paige even managed to sleep), manageable jetlag (if you don’t include Paige waking up at 2 a.m. the first morning, me thinking it was 5, and getting up with her for an hour or so until we realised it was going to be a long-haul ‘til sunrise and eventually getting back to sleep), and general relaxation in the August sunshine. Oh, and a cycling fall on Ashley’s part necessitating a trip to Dartmouth Medical Center (thanks for the drive, Dad), where the diagnosis was sprain, resulting in a support wrap + no driving or cycling for a while.

Relaxing on the deck

Enjoying Farmer's Diner breakfast



Bubble time

 But still and all, relatively chilled first couple of days’ holiday – punctuated, however, by incessant shots on the 24-hour news channels of reporters predicting how, when, and where Hurricane Irene would hit, and how hard she would do it. Breathless stories told of Lower Manhattan buildings being evacuated and subways shut, suburban Boston shops being stripped of supplies, New Jersey shores being washed away, FEMA standing by. But not much about Vermont. How could a hurricane hitting the coast really bother inland Vermont?

High rise water - already receding



A little wind damage

 Hmm... guess no one considered the rain. And more rain. And then some more. I think it rained steadily from Saturday evening through to the early hours of Monday morning, flooding rivers and destroying homes and businesses throughout the state, including in little harder-than-we-expected-to-be-hit Woodstock.

Fortunately for our family, CN(AP) is at the top of a hill and then some, so all we suffered was a day stuck inside, trying to keep a near-three-year-old entertained. Many in the area weren’t so lucky, however. According to Sustainable Woodstock, up to 150 homes were ‘severely compromised’, with 20 – 25 being completely uninhabitable. And statistics like these were brought home a few days later, walking through the harder-hit riverside parts of the town. At one home, sadly representative of many, we passed piles of mud-covered appliances on top of soggy carpeting and unrecognisable household artefacts, while volunteers painstakingly separated and towelled off stacks of old photographs and books, laying out pictures and paintings to dry in the sun to the soundtrack of heavy duty generators powering fans and pumps in an effort to get things back to normal.

The still near overflowing Ottauquechee, days later

Woodstock businesses were similarly hard hit – in particular by power and water outages, meaning several shops were forced to close for a number of critical tourist-filled days in that last week of summer. For nearly a week walking down Main Street was like being on a movie set or ghost town, eerily quiet especially for that time of year.

Definitely puts the annoying-but-manageable power cuts we suffered through the week in perspective...