Tuesday, February 23, 2010

The Blizzard of Aught 10

Saturday started out rainy, then briefly turned to hail.












Then it started to snow.

It would have been a lovely day to sit inside by a fire, but we had plans.

Gerald had set up a meeting to discuss a consultant's report on our roads and the purchase of DG from a property owner who had a pile left over from Arizona Land and Ranches on his lot.

Afterward, we planned to attend an open house meet and greet with three "old timers" arranged by the Historical Society at the old schoolhouse before heading home.

The POA meeting was to take place outside, on the lot, and Gerald didn't have everyone's cell phone numbers. But one of the participants called and said it would be better to meet outside than to try to have everyone negotiate the slippery roads out to our place.

So the meeting was a soggy one. (I stayed in the truck. lol)












On our way into Yarnell, we saw a car loaded with snow. We couldn't imagine where it came from. It was too much snow for around here.

But as we approached Yarnell, we could see that there was almost a dividing line of rain vs. snow.








We stopped at the Bakery for lunch. This is a picture of the patio. Someone there told us that Yarnell had just experience a (short) blizzard. I'm not sure how one defines a blizzard or who declared it so, but at least two people told us the same thing.

At any rate, we were glad to be off the dirt roads, for this trip anyway.

Return to the Land

After a few weeks away (February is very busy for us), we returned to see first-hand the results of all the rain we missed.

To our surprise, most of the roads were in better shape than we expected. But they were really bad in places. This is our driveway.

Before the last batch of rain, we had thought we might be able to get away with just one grading this year, but that didn't seem possible now.




The road sign people had also been there. The county is making us install road signs in unit 1 of phase 3 for 911 purposes.

These little red flags mark where the signs will be.








We also saw a number of new downed trees.

This one was on a little "island" in a three-way intersection. Gerald had intended to cut it up and haul it away before we grading was scheduled for next week, but the chain saw didn't cooperate.