So after a perfectly lovely day, we went to bed and woke to a storm in the middle of the night, the likes of which I've never seen. We had left our bedroom windows open to catch the breeze and suddenly there was wind, constant thunder and lightning and the sound of cracking tree branches surrounding us for about 40 minutes. We lost power and when morning came and we could look around, it was clear why.
Marie's house is surrounded by woods and our plan for the morning had included clearing a path she has been working on between here and the golf course that backs up against her property. Instead, we spent the morning cleaning up branches and twigs for her to use in her chiminea and Tom using this small wood saw to remove the bigger branches that were either blocking her driveway or on top of her gardens.
Joey, who until a few months ago was chief of police before he retired, was very happy to NOT be in charge of this mess and brought us a case of bottled water. Many people in NJ have well water on their property which requires electricity to run the pump. Hence, no electric, no water, no toilet....you get it. Makes me glad we have our plastic tubs full of 72 hour kit necessities however due to the fact they're sitting in our garage in UT, they weren't much help here!
After working in Marie's yard, we headed to Joey's to check out his damage (and to use his bathroom facilities as he has city water which was working). He and his neighbor had to dig out the big gun chain saws while we raked and cleaned up his back yard of the smaller stuff. We had planned to spend the afternoon at the dock on Joe's boat but needless to say, that was put on hold as well!
The town looked like a disaster area and we were plenty filthy so Victor told us we could come to his house in Ocean City to clean up. Miraculously they hadn't been hit there. So odd that the storm would come inland but skip by the shore. Marie said that as she had gone to bed about 11PM, a newswoman had said a big storm had unexpectedly hit them in Washington DC and looked like it was headed towards Philly. The Jersey folks said this was way worse than any hurricane warning storm they've ever received.
After showering at Victor's house I took some photos of his darling neighborhood while the others cleaned up. This big patio is over his garage which is actually a garage for his plane which he can pull out onto the runway which lines up directly behind his house. Cool, huh?
Just a sucker for these cute Victorians....reproductions or not.
We headed into town to grab some food and ended up with pizza. I headed to an Italian bakery down the street while they waiting for the pizza and came back with the best fresh cannoli ever!
We were starving to we just couldn't wait to get to Tom's mom's house to get
started. Everyone was out of ice and water so when we came around a corner and saw them unloading a truck at a convenience store, we screeched to a halt along with all of these other cars!
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