Framing Progress and Flood Reports

We achieved our goal on friday and completed the first floor. The footprint for the house is done, and we can see how we are perched above the Gorge. Wow! The deck is going to be 16' above the ground, and is going to feel like it's on a cliff; which it is. Framing the first floor walls begins as soon as the rain stops. This is the second weekend in a row lost to rain, and it hurts to lose days when the stores not open.We are on pins and needles when it rains around here, highway 43 to Harrison is our lifeline to Matt's school and the store and is falling off the mountain. It is down to one lane teetering on the edge, the other lane is already gone. Man, that is not something you expect to have to deal with. I went for a hike in the Gorge yesterday to check out what the flood did, and was dumbfounded at the power of water. The creek is scoured clean from all the ice damage, but other debris is left from the flood. It looks so much better and natural now, the big log jams are gone but strange sights surprised me. A spare tire on top of a rock 15' above the above the creek, a frame of my nieghbors deck stuck in a tree high up. We also had a pretty good size landslide below the bluff the house sits on, wiping out part of one of the trails. While hiking down to the Mushroom, I noticed several massive boulders moved around and several landslides on the creek banks, the flood really changed things. The Gorge is a great example of how the ozarks were formed though erosion and floods. Lets just hope that our place stays strong. Also , a group of kayakers paddled the creek last saturday and reported that it was in great shape.It's raining hard now so we will probably get to see more floods, and I will get to go paddling again like I did on saturday.