ARK SURVIVES FLOOD! VICTORY AT SEA!

Yes! The ARK survived the recent flood at Martin Lake Resort!

Floodwaters have receded, so it's sad to say that we have no more ducks because we have no more lake. Skippy has been busy unearthing them furry little varmits that were surfacing due to the high level of water in the soil - digging them up, then reburying them after their demise, over in the Native American Beagle burying mound. And we are busy unearthing relics that were stored in the crawl space (aka "indoor pool") to see what happened to them in the flood.

But... Good News! The ARK survived the flood! When it was found, the occupants were still inside, seated exactly where they were (40 days/40 nights) since the flood. Apparently they were little phased by the whole ordeal, as they were found still reading some captivating books with images of flowers in them.

The ark, built by Phil's grandfather many, many, many years ago (okay - not exactly in Noah's time), was found resting upon the mount at the top of our driveway after extracting it from the crawl space. Still in pretty good shape - a little dusty, musty smelling, but otherwise in pretty good shape. In this photo, you can see where the water level was on the bottom of the ark - where the paint is cracking off the bottom (see brown streaks in photo).

There were some other items, though, in questionable condition - such as three boxes of old 78 rpm and 33 rpm record albums (the equivalent of CDs and DVDs from many, many years ago, though not Noah's time!). The jackets are mostly pretty well water damaged, but the records might be salvagable. Perhaps 1963 wasn't such a good year... at least for this particular album.

A few albums escaped much damage at all. Maybe a little dampness, but otherwise at least in pretty good shape. For one: VICTORY AT SEA! Imagine that!

We still have more boxes of to sort out, to figure out what to do with what we've salvaged, where to store it again - but, hey... the crawl space is getting cleaned out, so that's cool! Unfortunately, there are 5-6 plastic containers of Christmas decorations still in the crawl space. I wish some of them had been in paper boxes so we could just get rid of them.

So, that's it for the first round of crawl space extractions. No salamanders discovered as yet, but stay tuned for further adventures at Martin Lake Resort.