floodlands

 I'm terribly behind in posting: apologies for that and I'll definitely get caught up this weekend.  We were last down in Moab on August 11 - driving into town in the most amazing lightning storm and experiencing the smaller of the two floods firsthand.  But more recently, on August 20, Moab was caught in a massive flood that brought Millcreek, which flows right through the center of town, right out of its banks and over bridges, wiping out the Up the Creek Campground (gofundme here) and, at one point, having a greater flow than the Colorado River.  The creek completely redirected its course in several spots and inundated the Youth Garden Project, among other businesses and homes.  At one point there was three feet of water flowing down Main Street, completely swamping Dewey's and the Moab Kitchen (gofundme here) and pinning a passenger car against a lamppost.  Amazingly, the Back of Beyond bookstore employee had the wherewithal to sandbag the doors as the water came down the street and they only got some mud on the floor, no books damaged.  The Millcreek Parkway bike path, recently completely, is a wreck.  And while we've reached out to friends and neighbors to see how they made out (all okay, thankfully), we have been unable to find out how Woody's, our regular bar, fared: built right on the creek's bank, it has the potential for disaster.

Here's a video taken of downtown the next day.  The damage is unreal.  Amazingly, the storm was so localized that friends of ours who were camping up the Colorado River along Route 128, about ten miles from town, didn't even know there had been a storm.  Stay safe out there, everyone.  Back to regular programming in our next post.