...and, unfortunately, this pertains to SW Wisconsin as well...

We were going to take off on our annual camping trip to SE Minnesota yesterday. This is something that I look forward to all year. Looking at the weather forecasts, though, it was raining up there and looked like it was going to rain for the rest of the week. I can usually stand the rain but the rest of my family started hemming and hawing about not wanting to sit out there getting wet for a week and so we called it...I phoned and cancelled the reservations at the campgrounds yesterday at about eleven in the morning.

Little did I know...

A little bit after that I checked the local news and weather for the area and saw that they had catastrophic flooding over Saturday night. A couple of the smaller towns are totally flooded, people are being evacuated the the high school gym in St. Charles and the college in Winona. The state park is closed and the campsite that we had booked is probably under water.

I am so sad...and I'm worried about some of the folks that we've met on our trips up there. Not like we're close friends with anybody...best connection we had was a Swedish Lutheran pastor and his wife that we knew in Chicago before they got transfered up there and they've ben transfered again farther West so I really don't have anybody to call and see how they're all doing.

There have been a few fatalities but it sounds like a whole lot of people have gotten their homes destroyed. My heart goes out to those folks...I hope that they can deal with the adversity and get things back to normal soon.

Best

AA