Singing in the Rain

I packed up a bunch of gear and supplies and headed back out to Nordegg on the morning of June 29th.  The girls decided to stay home in the city for the long weekend.  Hailey and Helena just got back from a road trip to Vancouver, to see a concert, so they didn't really want to be on the road again.  And Margarit wanted to catch up on some chores that needed attention since our trip down to southern Alberta.  I wanted to take advantage of the chance to get some quiet time to myself, and get back to work on some stuff in the guest cottage.

I know it is going to be very busy out in the mountains for the Canada Day long weekend.  I plan to not even leave the property until the weekend ends and most people go back home.

In the early evening I decided to head out for a walk.  As per usual I decided to walk the loop around Tamarack Trail and Pine Martin Drive.  This is about 1-3/4 miles.  I got about half way and a thunderstorm began to roll in.  By the time I hit the 2/3 mark, there were a couple of flashes of lightning, followed immediately by thunderclaps.  Then the clouds opened up and it started to pour.  We got about 5mm of rain mixed with pea sized hail, in about 15 minutes.  The rain was at my back, so I was soaked the skin on my backside, but dry in front.  Just as I got back to the cottage and walked up the driveway to the door, the rain quit and the sun started to bust back out.

There is still a little snow up on Baldy Mountain and Coliseum Mountain from the storm a week ago.  All the little streams are running significantly, and the storm water pond is full.  Unfortunately, so was the crawl space in the main cottage.  The downhill third of the crawlspace had about 4 inches of water in it.  Judging by the high water line, it must have been almost ten inches at the peak.  The garage and the guest cottage never flood because there is a natural slope at both locations and the weeping tile carries the water away.  There is a low spot in the bedrock at one corner of the main cottage and water gets trapped there.  I have an exterior sump, with a sump pump in it, but I don't like to leave it on when I'm not around.  Sometimes the vibration of the pump causes the discharge hose to fall down into the sump, and then the pump runs continuously, just circulating the same water.  Even worse, sometimes the float switch on the pump gets hung up and the wall of the sump and then the pump runs dry and burns out.

I turned the pump on when I arrived and got rid of all the water.  But now it is going to take a while for everything to fully dry out.  I guess I'll have to run the furnace fan for while to speed up that process.  This happens once every couple of years whenever there is a heavy rain and we are not around.  So I know enough not to leave anything valuable or water sensitive in the low part of the basement.  As a result, there was no damage to anything.