a Hoosier and a Hurricane

Floyd. A rather unassuming, mild-mannered sort of name.

But Floyd caused us a great deal of problems on our first year anniversary trip to the East Coast. My wife and I had a rather short, frugal honeymoon, so we decided to take an extended trip to the East Coast in 1999, to celebrate our first year of marriage. It was also the first real test of spending a lot of time in the car together, wife navigating while I drove......despite a long, silent car ride from about the Adirondacks into Vermont, after missing a turn or two.......we're still together, almost 9 years later.

Anyway, still living on love, we decided to tent camp during our stay at Acadia National Park, off the coast of Maine. We arrived at the campground and quickly realized there were very few other campers......due to Hurricane Floyd changing course and working its way up the coast. We figured, aw, we can make it through the night. The winds howled and the rains came. And this was just the precursor to the main storm, yet to run ashore. So, the second night, we rented one of the campground's little log cabins, about 8' x 10', and hunkered down. And it was crazy. I think most disappointing was the fact that the wind kept blowing out my matches while I tried to light the grill on the porch.

We had planned to head down to Boston and back to Indiana the next two days. But Floyd was still churning off the coast of Massachusetts and we thought it would be better to go back the way we came, inland.....spending the night at Lake Placid, New York. Wouldn't you know that the hurricane decided to go inland and flooded roads and bridges throughout Vermont and into New York and most areas were without power. The Bar Harbor/Acadia area is impressive and the ocean was furious from the approaching storm. Vermont was a place you could just settle into nice and easy.....which is why we had planned to return there this year. I think we're staying in state....to many hurricanes. BTW......South Bend got like 11 inches of rain over the weekend, mostly due to Ike. Holy Cow! Our basement, by the way......DRY!