Remember how I mentioned a few posts ago that our state was in such a state of drought that the Governor asked everyone to pray for rain? And remember how we got one delightful rainstorm and I asked for more please? Well, consider my prayer answered and my wish granted. In full.
On Sunday the 1st of August we had free afternoon and decided it would be a great day to go visit Chase up at camp. It was super cute, actually - we had been talking to him about finding a day to see him and he was more encouraging about it than I expected him to be. We even rearranged the day after he let us know that he had Sunday off and would enjoy a visit from us. That made me happy.
We drove our way up to camp and enjoyed eating Sunday dinner with our cute boy. We got to meet so many of his sweet camp friends and walk around the mountainside. It wasn't a long visit, but it was a fun one. I loved chatting with everyone we had been hearing so much about.
Well, we hugged and kissed Troy goodbye, got in our separate cars and drove away from one another. Troy of course could have come with us but since we were A) Going to see a musical at the Shakespeare Festival and B) Were going to southern Utah during the hottest time of year, he said thanks but no thanks.
And then we all almost drowned. A storm came up from the south - in fact, only a few hours before we drove through Cedar City that part of the freeway had to be shut down because it was really more of a waterway than a freeway. We even saw a video of an SUV and trailer basically floating away into a field. Both our south-bound minivan and Troy's north-bound civic ran into some troubles. Okay, Troy got home just fine, but as he was pulling into the driveway, the storm hit hard and he found himself getting soaked to the absolute bone while getting our sad soggy chickens out of the rain and into their coop. It was so funny - we had literally THAT morning been chatting about how it had never rained hard enough at our house to actually flood our back porch. And that very night he sent me video of water absolutely sluicing onto our porch. He did just what we talked about him doing in that case - he used our garden hoses to start syphoning water away from the back yard and to the street. He said it was pretty alarming. Some rainstorms are exciting and fun and some kind of scare the crap out of you. Lucky for us we had no flooding and all was well. We didn't have to even water the lawn for like three weeks.
As for Peter and me, we had a very soggy drive to St. George. There was a moment just around Payson that might be one of the scariest driving moments of my life, right up there with losing my breaks while going down Big Cottonwood Canyon while being towed by my neighbor. (Story for another day.) We were driving along at good old highway speeds when the storm hit and an absolute wall of water came down on us. As it hit, the other cars around us also started spraying water up from their tires and the combination of directions was equivalent to getting paint poured on my windshield. I could see literally nothing out the windshield. I knew I couldn't stop or even really slow down - everyone else was driving fast too and would have no idea that someone ahead of them stopped. I basically just prayed, slowed down a little, and headed for the shoulder of the road. It was so scary! The rest of the drive was pretty wet with a few other nail-biting moments, though none as bad as that first one.
Basically, we got our prayed-for water, all in about 45 minutes. I heard that the avenues got about 4" of water in that evening storm. The roads were totally cluttered with rocks and debris and lots of places were just a real mess. I was super grateful that all was safe for us on the roads. Utah seems to have had so many more tragic accidents and deaths recently and getting to my destinations safely is now feeling like more of an accomplishment than ever.
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