A Trip to Remember...

We had planned for a nice, relaxing weekend in Ruidoso, NM with Tyson, myself, Taylor, Nana and Doodah (my parents), Mimi and Poppa (Tyson's parents), and Belle (our dog). As fate would have it, the weekend turned out to be anything but nice and relaxing. The story is long, and for that I apologize. It's difficult to shorten up such an adventure. It goes a little something like this....

By Friday afternoon, everyone has flown into Lubbock and we're ready to head to New Mexico. The only potential downfall that any of us see at this point is that Taylor is not feeling good and that she has a low-grade fever. The actual trip to NM was fine. If anyone thinks that Lubbock is ugly, you should travel west of Lubbock. It truly is the end of the world. And then you enter NM and it resembles west Texas for a while, but then the hills start appearing and give you hope that there are better things to come.

We stopped in the town of Roswell to eat dinner and I think we all wished we could've stayed there a little bit longer. It was a very unique place with very interesting shops. We finally arrived in Ruidoso around 8:30 that night. Not even ten minutes after we arrived we saw our first bear! It was walking across the street from our cabin as we were trying to unload our car. Pretty crazy.

Speaking of the cabin, it was a cute little cabin located directly on the river. Although we couldn't see the river, we could definitely hear it...and it was so peaceful. It sounded like a little trickling stream. I couldn't wait until the next morning so we could see what our surroundings looked like, and more importantly, what our little river looked like.

-Saturday Morning-
--weather report: light sprinkling, in the 50s

Taylor's up early as usual, but it's really not that big of a deal. She and I went out onto our big screened-in porch that looks out onto the river and just chilled out. Taylor still wasn't feeling her best, so we spent a long time on the porch just relaxing until everyone else got up. After a little bit of medicine, Taylor started getting a little kick in her step. And with that, we all decided to do some touristy things. We first went to the "Inn of the Mountain Gods" casino and hotel. It's supposed to be some big attraction there, so we had to check it out. It was very pretty there....but if you've been to one smoky casino, you've been to them all!! Doodah lost $5, Tyson won $0.75 and everyone else broke even (meaning that no one else played anything!!). While we were there, we ate at this huge-mongous buffet!! It was sooo good. If we had known what was to come, I think we all would have stayed there the rest of the day stocking up on all that good food!!

Tyson and Belle playing in the river on Saturday.

A shot of the river from my parents' bedroom prior to the flood.

We went to Wal-Mart for some "light" shopping....we only planned on making breakfast for the next two mornings and lunch for one day. The rest of the time we were going to eat out. Again, if we had known what was to come, our shopping strategy would have changed and would have included lots and lots of water!!

That afternoon, we all went for a light hike. Doodah and Poppa were most excited to see deer. I guess we saw around 10 or so deer, with at least one or two bucks. Pretty cool.

Taking a break from our grueling hike to take a group pic!

That night, we wrapped up our enjoyable day by cooking hamburgers on the grill out by the river. By this time, Taylor's fever had completely broken and she was feeling much better!

-EARLY Sunday Morning-
--weather report: raining, but hard to tell how much and how hard, in the 50s-60s again

Around 1:30 I awoke to some loud bumping and banging. My first thought was that a bear had gotten into our screened-in porch and was about to make his way into our cabin. The room that Tyson, Taylor and I were staying in looked out directly onto the porch....and as fate would have it, the blinds were completely drawn up. So I laid in bed thinking that a bear was on the other side of our window looking at us. Pretty freaked out.

Not long after that, I heard Tyson sit up in bed and noticed that he was looking out the window onto the porch. He said that he thought he saw someone on the porch. Now talk about freaking out!! All the while, the bumping and banging is still going on and getting louder. Some of the bumps were so loud that our whole room shook.

So we laid there in bed trying to figure out where the noise was coming from and who was on our porch. Just then I saw someone on our porch looking out to the river....it was Tyson's dad. Whew! We ran out there to see what he was doing, and he was checking out what was making all the ruckus. That's when we all discovered that the river was getting higher and it was getting stronger. All of the bumping and banging was the water and anything in the water (i.e., tree debris, boulders, etc.) slamming against the house. We all returned to bed, although I don't think any of us really went back to sleep. And for those wondering who the first person was that Tyson thought he saw on the porch, it was my dad (we later found out). He, too, was trying to figure out what was going on.

Everyone eventually rolled out of bed around 6:00. Tyson and I looked out another set of windows in our room....these windows looked out directly on the river.....and were completely amazed at how high the river was. It was high enough that if we had opened our windows, we would've gotten wet. We then went into everyone else's bedrooms to pier out their windows and the scene was just shocking. The water was rushing so strongly it resembled a white water rapid. It was very unnerving.

While all of us were uneasy, none of us were too scared b/c we thought SURELY if this wasn't normal then someone would let us know. If not the people that we were renting the cabin from, then surely the police officer that was driving up and down our street. This is just an aside for the time being, but the police officer must have driven past our cabin 3-4 times between 6:00 - 7:00 that morning.

Business went on as usual. Mimi was making breakfast. Nana was entertaining Taylor. I can't remember what the two grandpas were doing. I was having some bad feelings about our room getting wet, so I started packing things up and was getting our belongings as far away from the window as possible. Tyson took Belle up the road to scope things out and on his return he witnessed a tree that was right next to our cabin get swept into the river. That's when we decided to get out right then and there.

This picture was taken the day before. The tree on the right is the one that got swept into the river. The tree stump next to the porch was completely under water by the time we got out of there.

We had all of our bags packed and ready to be loaded up on the car in five minutes. We had never moved so fast. By the time Tyson saw the tree fall in and we had all of our bags packed, the water was completely surrounding our cabin. At some point during the chaos, Poppa took the cabin's vacuum cleaner and somehow rigged it up between the stairway that led up to the car and tied it down to a tree next to our porch. We used the vacuum's cord as a rope to hold onto so we wouldn't get swept in the river. Yes folks, that's how hard the water was flowing. Pretty scary stuff. Tyson took Taylor across and he said that she had never held onto him as tightly as she did that day. Belle (who's used to running through water) took a few big leaps and she was safely across and in the car.

This picture was taken the day before. Not a great shot, but it gives you an idea of what we had to cross in order to get to our car. By the time we had to cross it to "escape," you couldn't see the ground at all.

Once we had everything out of the cabin, we backed the car up to a higher part of the road just across from the cabin so the guys could cover all of our luggage. Tyson went back into the cabin to salvage all of our food that we had just bought (thank goodness....or we would've been really hungry!!). During his last trip into the cabin, he lost one of his Crocs.....the only casualty that we can report!

We immediately drove down the road to get out, but the one bridge we had to cross was completely under water....and the water was going too fast. Tree limbs and trunks were smashing into the bridge. While we were there, we saw one of the signs next to the bridge get knocked down. We decided it best not to cross.

So we went back up to the office of the lodge where we were staying at. The poor people we were renting from had never experienced anything like this, so they were pretty much at a loss as to what to do. They told us that we could just hang out in the office until things settled down. I think they realized that things weren't settling down anytime soon, so they gave us a key to an empty cabin that was located right next to all of their cabins. Thank goodness the people that owned that cabin weren't there, because otherwise, we wouldn't have had anywhere to go to.

This picture was taken the day before the flood. The picture was taken from our first cabin looking up to our second cabin (the cabin furthest to the left is where we ended up staying).

Once again, we unpacked and got ourselves situated. I think everyone's nerves were still shaken....we were mainly just trying to figure out what had just happened and why no one had warned us.

We witnessed Mother Nature's fury that day. And that's something you don't take lightly. We actually witnessed a young girl get rescued from the river. She had been up the road from us and had jumped in to save another kid that had gotten swept into the water. The other kid did not make it. Tyson, Poppa, Doodah and several other men were all involved in the rescue effort of getting this little girl to safety. Down the road from us an elderly man had gotten trapped in his house. Tyson, Poppa and Doodah saw this poor man in his house, but there was nothing they could do to help him. In the end, he had to wait for the fire fighters to rescue him. I think in all three people died that day in the rushing water.

A shot of our cabin as the water was rushing down the street. Our car used to be parked where all the debris is on the right side. The water had actually started going down by this point...you can see the yellow line in the road....something that was not visible during the highest flow.

Another shot of our cabin and all of the mess.

Later that afternoon we had heard that there was a water tank just above our cabin that we could get water from. So we took all of the pots that we could find and headed up there. Sure enough, there was a pinkie-sized hole in it that was plugged with a stick. That's where everyone around us got their water and where several people took their showers. Oh, I forgot to mention that there was no running water...so we were in desperate need of water to flush with and drinking water.

Another bridge up the road from our cabin that had gotten washed out. There was debris everywhere.

News, police and army helicopters were buzzing around the whole area. Apparently there were some people up the road from us that were on primitive camp sites that were stranded.....and the army helicopters had to rescue them.

An army copter flying over us.

By the evening the waters had subsided greatly....almost to the point where there was no water left on the road. The river was still very intense but it, too, was going down. The guys were mainly hanging out by the bridge...that I forgot to mention.....it had washed out not long after we tried to cross it. So we were essentially stuck!!

After a delicious supper of fish sticks, corn and mac & cheese (all courtesy of the people who's cabin we were staying in!), we got word that they were handing out food down by the washed-out bridge. All the grandparents loaded up in the car and went to see what they were giving out. They returned with steak finger baskets from K-Bob's. Yay! We have lunch for tomorrow!

-Monday Morning-
-weather report: absolutely beautiful, in the 50s

It was such a beautiful morning that it was hard to believe that we were actually stuck there! My dad was most excited because he spotted an elk up the mountain. It was pretty exciting!

The elk that we saw. It was pretty high up the mountain, hence the poor picture quality!

As the day progressed, we kept getting different reports. We heard that they would be making another food/water drop-off at noon and then a foot bridge would be built around 3:00 that afternoon. Until then, the fire fighters had laid a ladder across the washed-out bridge and people were climbing down it to "escape." We estimated that close to 100 people evacuated that way. Even babies and dogs were evacuated that way....the fire fighters just strapped them in a carseat and slid them down the ladder.

Fire fighters pulling a dog to safety (he's strapped in the car seat).

The food arrived an hour late....and that's not a good thing when there are lots of hungry people waiting! While we had some food, there were some people up there that didn't have any. As expected, 3:00 came and went and no foot bridge was being built.

Waiting for food and water.

After lunch, Tyson, Poppa and Doodah crossed the ladder to go into town to get some more groceries. While we could live off the assortment of canned goods that were at the cabin, we had to have milk for Taylor. So the guys packed up their back packs with as much food as they could carry and crossed back over the ladder. Tyson said it was amazing how the town was. It was untouched by the water and unphased by the people that were trapped. It was almost as if nothing had happened the day before.

Taylor looking up at one of the many helicopters.

We started hearing from different people that they were going to build a temporary bridge that we could all drive out on. One report was that we would have an hour to get out once they opened the bridge; the other report was that we would have two days to get out. We didn't know what to believe. So after dinner we headed down to the bridge site to see what was up and sure enough, they were quickly building a dirt bridge. Cars were already lining up! We headed back to the cabin, loaded all of our stuff back up and got in line. We were all so excited!!

Waiting in the car for the bridge to open up. Taylor's ready to get the heck out of Ruidoso!

We finally crossed the bridge at 10:30 that night and got back to Lubbock at 2:30 that morning. It was an exhausting trip. Our parents caught flights back to Dallas and Houston on Tuesday afternoon. Our trip was officially over.

There are sounds that I don't think any of us are going to forget for a long time. Mainly the sound of the boulders crashing into each other as they tumbled down the river. It was such an eerie sound....especially when you realize they were crashing into your cabin while you slept! The sound of the helicopters buzzing directly over us is something that will be hard to forget as well.

All in all, we were most disappointed with how the town of Ruidoso responded to the disaster. We found out that people down the road from us (less than 2 miles from where we were staying) were evacuated at 1:00 Sunday morning. What makes a cop stop evacuating people?? Especially upsetting was that the dang police officer was driving right past our cabin several times that morning, knowing full well that people down the road from us were evacuated earlier that morning. The very least they could do was to let the people, such as ourselves, who were staying directly on the river know that the water was rising at a dangerous level.

There was no order in the food/water hand out. We never received any official word as to what was being done. We had heard so many different stories that weekend. There was never any police presence on our side of the bridge. It would have been nice just to see them out confirming that people were okay.

Ruidoso is a beautiful place....but it's somewhere that I will never intentionally visit again. Primarily because of the lack of concern from the town of Ruidoso. I encourage you all to visit a K-Bob's if you're in the vicinity. They graciously donated all of the food that we depended on.

Being trapped with our parents wasn't bad at all! In fact, if we ever had to go through a similar situation, then those are the people that I would want to be trapped with! We all made the most of what was happening. No one got down or depressed. We even found some funny moments in the midst of everything. Luckily Taylor is too young to realize what was going on. She had a great time playing with all of her grandparents.

Glory be to God that we all got out of there safely.

Taylor was our constant source of entertainment.

Taylor playing chase with daddy.

Belle took everything in stride.