We have a tradition in our house of going camping on Mother's Day weekend. Unfortunately, it was extremely rainy that weekend, so we postponed our trip. . . to Memorial Day weekend. We could never have guessed that the rain would pretty much continue straight through the month of May with nearly 3 inches falling over Memorial Day weekend! On Sunday evening, we went for a drive to assess the flooding, and it was pretty impressive. We started out in Ottawa, where they had to close the flood gates and the water was nearly over the bridge.
So much debris piled up next to the bridge. . .
We drove on from the city to see some of the more rural flooding. Russ always knows the best places to go! He found this spot just north of Imes (?) where the river looked like this:
And crazy boys in front of the river looked like this (right before they got yelled at for being too crazy around rushing water):
But more impressive than the river itself was all of the surrounding areas where the river had got out of its banks. The fields really looked more like lakes.
It's a little difficult to see, but the road to Peoria is completely covered with water. Alas, maybe someday.
Russ went out to assess how deep it was and if it was safe to drive through. We decided to make this a learning experience for the boys and teach them, "Turn around, Don't drown!" Several times on our excursion that evening, we took a 4-mile detour to avoid driving through water on the roads.
The boys loved checking out all of the "lakes" we discovered on our drive.
Another water-filled area (and another area we turned around) was along Rock Creek Road, west of Rantoul. So for those keeping track, that's Peoria, Imes, and Rantoul in one evening. We are adventurous like that.
The water was really flowing fast here!
So the floods killed our camping trip. But it was kind of cool to check out all of the water anyway. We'll just have to be patient and wait for everything to dry up and THEN go camping. Hope everyone had a fun Memorial Day!
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