Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Car Fixing and Examining Flood Damage


On September 10, Josh and I left early in the morning to head to his parent's house in Granville Summit. Most would view this as nothing out of the ordinary, except two days before, remnants of a tropical storm dumped 9 inches of rain on the Susquehanna River Valley, which in turn submerged numerous roads and towns. As we headed north, we noted many flood ravaged areas and could actually see how high the water had been considering there was a layer of mud on the tree leaves. We stopped at the Asylum overlook in Marie Antoinette so that we could get a nice view of the swollen and muddy Susquehanna.
Once we reached Wyalusing, we needed to start taking detours because water still covered numerous roads, making them impassable. After some meandering around, we made our way back onto Route 6 West, only to be diverted again outside Wysox. After the detours and taking the other end of the road, we finally made it to Josh's parents.
We ate lunch before Josh set to work fixing the shift cable in his car. I spent my time pacing and discussing different topics with his family. Once the car got fixed, we decided to go for a walk to look at some of the flood damaged roads. There was one road that was completely chewed up by all of the water at one end. As we continued walking along the road, it soon became apparent that the road was no longer a road, but a stream. The pipe going under the road had become partially blocked, which diverted the stream from it's actual route and converted the road into a stream. As you can see, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Josh and I then backtracked and made our way to the other end of the road he lives on to see why it was closed. Pretty much, the pipe was washed away, caving the road in so that there is now a 20 foot drop-off. Needless to say, it's amazing how powerful water can truly be in immense amounts.
The rest of our evening was quite pleasant. We all had pizza for dinner and the general consensus was that chicken wing pizza with bleu cheese tastes like paint. Following dinner and conversing, we decided it was best to begin the trek south again. In order to avoid the detours we encountered on the trip north, we opted for driving through Williamsport on the way back to East Stroudsburg.

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