We keep our ears fixed to weather reports as we travel and yesterday the reports indicated that stormy weather was on the way. They were right. It started light rain at about 5:00 AM today and got heavier as the sun rose. By about 10:00 AM, it was raining in excess of an inch per hour and the poor civil engineering of Rancho Oso reared its ugly head. Runoff was moving rocks up to about 4″ happily downhill in the numerous uncontrolled streams that formed everywhere. Rain was so heavy sometimes that our satellite TV antenna would lose signal for some of the time.
After about four hours of heavy rain, the rain quit and the cold wind started up with gusts of maybe 30 mph. Since the rain had quit, Peggy and I decided to take a drive around the area to check out any damage from the storm. We ended up driving through quite a few drainage issues on the campground road where water had jumped the roadside ditch and spread tons of rock and soil onto the pavement in numerous locations.
We drove from the end of the campground road up Paradise Road and the Santa Ynez River but had only gone about a mile before encountering a big government-looking barricade across the highway due to a flooded concrete low-water crossing and slides along the road. Peggy got out of the truck to snap a few photos and overheard a woman stopped at the gate who indicated she lived upstream but it looked like the only way she was getting home today was through swimming and walking.
We returned to our cozy trailer and hunkered down for the rest of the day. Since the rain has backed off, TV reception is back so we can watch old westerns until we can’t stand it anymore. The Iowa caucuses are tomorrow but we don’t want to watch political news because they mostly show the disgusting prick Donald Trump all the time, just like the twit had something important to say while badmouthing everyone who disagrees with him. I hope the American people are not foolish enough to put this goon in power. I shudder to think about how quickly the poor will get poorer, the rich richer and the brain-dead more powerful should this coiffure-challenged real estate salesman and loudmouth get elected.