Friday, April 10, 2009

Flooding on O'neal Tram and Powell Hammock


View from inside my truck on O'Neal Tram


This is where you turn off O'Neal Tram onto Powell Hammock to go to Goose Pasture.



My truck was pushing up a pretty good sized wave.




Powell Hammock, in places the water was at least 4 feet deep.



Duck was having a good time.




Swirl over the culvert in Cow Creek.





The road has washed pretty hard on this side as you cross Cow Creek.





We had to make a rescue trip into Goose for Duck's airboat, I think he could have just driven it out.




It was over my exhaust at this point.





We always manage to have fun no matter what we are doing.



Tuesday, April 7, 2009

We parked, had alittle discussion about where we were heading today and 1 minute later somebody was already stuck.






Ruby bailed on this one, it got alittle too tipsy for her.



Sarah loves it when we pull someone out.



Damn, now Mark's in it.



Still hard to find the roads.




We sent Mark in to see how deep it was.




Forward didn't work, so let's try it in reverse.




We made it thru but Sarah and I sat on the ice chest. I didn't want to end up with a snake in my lap.






I can't really tell you where we were at cause I'm not sure we are really supposed to be there. I can tell you there was alot of water on our normally dry road. All of this water is from the Wacissa not the Aucilla.


View from our Polaris.



This is what my floorboard looked like most of the day.




Duck's in it deep again.



We all made it thru this deep hole.



So, which way is the ROAD?






Dale was attempting to throw a mudfish on the bank with my "scratcher". It just doesn't take much to amuse some people.


These are all places that we walked through just 2 weeks ago. It's normally completely dry.



This "rainbow" just showed up on this photo at home. Kinda odd.




This was a fairly large gator that decided he would like to get some sun. Not such a good place for him. It's the bank in the campground.




Road leading out of campground.




Leaving the campground, Deb got the job of closing the gates. She had on the right shoes.



I'm not sure she enjoyed her job.







Duck chose the wrong side of this fireline. Hey Duck!, think you should have went the other way.





Nope, not that way.



I'm not sure that's the right way either.



Backing up for 1 more try.



Uh-Oh somebody's getting dirty.




Ruby and Duck square up.



Ruby, you might want to take a step back,


Dale is getting out of the way just in case.


Watch out! Ruby's getting a limb and Duck is finally backing up.

Welcome to Sinks Road, it follows the Aucilla and the road is literally surrounded by sink holes. The Aucilla was out of it's banks and still rising. You could not see the road in places, thank goodness we knew where the road used to be. Otherwise, you would drive straight into a sink.


Mark and Deb Duck and Ruby



The Aucilla was actually flowing in some areas, not just sitting in the woods and roads.




Nice Catch!




There is a boat ramp under there somewhere. Aucilla at half mile rise.






Meet Dude, he's full of energy and eager to show Sarah how to skip rocks.



Just watching and learning.



She lets one fly



Oops, she needs alittle more coaching.





Against our better judgement we decided to go to goose Thursday night instead of Friday since Sarah was out of school and we had the day off. There were severe weather warnings posted for North Florida and South Georgia, tornado watches, warnings and flood watches and warning. Soon after turning off Powell Hammock Road we had very strong winds with large hail, very scary. This picture was taken just a few minutes before it started, it didn't look bad at that time.




Just a few minutes later




Along the way we noticed a sinkhole forming along the road, you could not see the bottom of this small one, a new depression in the road had started to the right of it. Hard to tell from this picture. Sinks road is just down from here, go figure.



This is what the campground looked like the next morning.




The river covered the boat ramp and the little walk out dock.



Sarah was intriqued with the rising water, she had on her camping clothes and waterproof boots, she was afraid she looked like a boy.