Hurricane Irene

On Saturday morning (Aug. 27), we awoke to clear skies over Marblehead, Massachusetts.  The main news story was the expected arrival of Hurricane Irene in New England the following day.  Mandatory evacuations were in effect for parts of New York City, and citizens were urged to prepare for high winds, torrential rain, and extended power outages.  Since Marblehead is right on the ocean, with limited and congested highway access, we decided to head west while we still could.  We said farewell to our hosts and drove across the state of Massachusetts into western New York, arriving in Albany about 4pm.  We checked into a Hampton Inn near the airport and hunkered down for the storm.

It started raining at 6pm, just a light drizzle at first, but steadily increasing in intensity during the night.  By Sunday morning, the rain was coming down in sheets, with local wind gusts up to 50 mph.  The center of the storm, now downgraded from "hurricane" to "tropical storm", passed about 100 miles east of our location.  By 7pm the rain ceased but the winds continued to blow hard.  We could see our car and trailer from our window, and were relieved that it appeared secure, not even rocking in the buffeting wind.  Other than a few downed tree limbs, there was no damage or serious flooding near our hotel, nor did we lose power.

On Monday morning we continued our journey, but were thwarted by flooding on major highways to the west.  Instead, we turned south on Highway 87 as far as Newburg, Pennsylvania, where flooding again blocked all traffic.  It took us over 2 hours to travel the last 10 miles or so to Newburg, where all vehicles were diverted to Highway 24 west toward Scranton.

Just past Scranton, as the sun was setting, we followed our GPS to Bear Creek Camp and turned onto a narrow dirt road extending 2.5 miles into the deep woods.  We finally arrived at the office of what turned out to be a nearly deserted Lutheran camp and retreat center.  The camp host was just leaving and graciously allowed us to spend the night there in the parking lot, though we were the only campers in the park.  Slept amazingly well.