We drove down to Grays Harbor County, to go to a shower thrown by the Shadow Lady's family, and while there, we got a first hand look at the damage caused by the Wind and Rain storm over the last few days.

Leaving North Bend, the weather couldn't be nicer... but it wasn't long after we turned off I-5 to head West to the coast that we ran into the damaged areas...

At Kennedy Creek, where the road was overrun by the creek (above right picture), the road was quite good after only 3 days, but you could still see some of the debris along the side of the roadway.

In Central Park, where the power was completely out still, people were burning their woodstoves to keep warm.  That, along with the smoke from the folks burning residue from downed trees, gave the area a hazy overcast.


In some areas, the trees were pushed over onto the powerlines... in others, whole stands of trees were snapped. 

All along the roadway into Aberdeen, the power company had trucks working the lines, trying to restore power as quickly as it could. 

Even where the lines had been put back up, the evidence of how bad it must have been was evident.

Not far from where we here going, a train car had been knocked off its tracks, and it had been drug for about a mile, tearing up the track and snapping ties as it went.  Finally, it fell over, and pulled over several cars with it...

The rail road company had to build a road through the field to get heavy equipment out to the site... you have to imagine that the cleanup for just this one wreck is NOT going to be cheap!

Amostl everywhere you looked, evidence of damage was visible.

After the party, we drove through Centralia and Chehalis, the cities that were flooded for 4 days, closing more than 20 miles of the Interstate.

The flood damage was everywhere... the most visible was in Centralia, where "double-wides" had floated off their foundations, and rested on a roadway next to the Interstate.

All up and down the road, you could see folks pulling the guts out of their homes and businesses, starting to clean up from the monumental mess.

Even though they were hit by the storms, more than a few towns had taken the time to put their Christmas decorations up...  Because, "...perhaps, Christmas means just a little bit more..."  

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