poor little river

First I have an announcement to make...this is my 100th post!  Woo hoo!  What better way to celebrate than to share something with you once again that is a huge part of our lives.
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As I mentioned yesterday we (J, K, the in-laws and I) went camping over the weekend.  The weather was nice for the most part and we had to check out what kind of damage was done by the recent Illinois River flooding.  A lady on the news said that her 80 year old grandmother has lived by the river her entire life and has never seen it that high.

There is a bridge you cross over to get into the river ranch that is about 35 feet high.  Next to the bridge is were we go swimming or start off on a miniature little body float down about a mile of the river.  What is a body float you ask?  Nothing but your body floating itself down the river.  On our 12 mile trips in a raft I (along with Kiera) usually bail out do this for about 8 of the 12 miles.  Of course she has a life jacket on but I don't have anything but the fat on my body to keep me afloat.  Yay for built in flotation device.  Not really.  Anyway right now the river is about 5 feet higher than normal.  

Here we are standing a little further up from where we usually swim since the gravel bar was under water.  There were a few trees laying down the left of where we were standing.  Like entire trees looked like they were just laid down on top of the gravel. 

 

Here is what the top of the bridge usually looks like and when the water was running over it.  From where these pictures are taken we would have been to the left...35 feet under water. 

Jimmy's aunt took the picture on the right last week.

The bridge is to the right of this barbed wire fence that's attacking the tree branch.  

And further into the IRR the water was completely covering the swing set.  You can tell how high the water got by the highest point that you can see debris.

 

So yeah it was crazy to imagine that much water covering a place we love.  There were people actually floating the river in rafts on Saturday.  I hope a tree hiding under the water didn't puncture their boats.  The water was yucky and brown so you couldn't see to the bottom like you usually can.  It's not fun getting attacked by trees hiding under water.  It happened to me once while I was body floating.  You can't see much when you are eye level with the water.  

Still it was absolutely beautiful since the trees had baby leaves that were so fluorescent green in the sunlight you could barely look directly at them.  I did not edit the picture at all below and you can see how bright everything is.  This was on one of the many 4 wheeler trail through the woods. 

Oh and we came across an empty lot that had these Iris's.  I didn't have a vase so I improvised.  Now they are sitting on our kitchen table...still in the beer bottles.

My mother in law found a turtle an brought him up for us to see.  Berkley wasn't so sure.  Maybe since I was laying on the ground 6 inches away from the turtles face he though it would be OK to get a little closer.  But once the turtle saw no one was paying attention it bolted.

Other than that Kiera and I took a couple walks while holding hands.  We had a huge bonfire.  Ate great food.  Next trip to the river will be Memorial Day weekend.  Here I come 5 day weekend!!!  The in-laws rented a cabin for all of us to stay in.  I hope they weren't under water too.