Tags: Vacation, Flood, Rental Car, Rain

For Labor Day weekend (last week), Beth and I took off from work on Friday, rented a car, and headed out to Berkeley Springs, WV - aka "Bath". Nice drive up there, only a few hours away from DC. We've been around there before, and this time we decided to stay in-town so we could park our car and walk around more than we have in the past. We stayed on the top floor of a Bed & Breakfast downtown.

Saturday was a rainy day. We wandered about, looked at some junk shops, had lunch, took a long nap. I kept waking up to booming rolling thunder, but felt safe and cozy. Once we were up and about there was this weird siren that kept going off (sounded like an air raid) -- the inn keeper told me that it was their fire department and all-purpose alarm, and that it's not a big deal.

We headed to dinner and there was some noticeable water in gutters. But we only were walking a block down the road, so no real worries. The wait staff seemed a bit... off. Nervous and stressed, I'd say. We heard them start telling people who came in after us that they needed to order quickly because they were shutting down the kitchen. Specifically because of water building up behind their building and starting to come into the kitchen! No fun. So we finished quickly and boogied out of there.

Water had gotten quite a bit deeper in the street... and as we were walking back to the B&B fire trucks started to park diagonally across the road, and firemen jumped out and started directing traffic away. They were shutting down the whole road! And no wonder... the water kept rising.

Walking in, the innkeeper told us that we should go out back and consider moving our car. And... that was an understatement. I should have taken photos, but I was too busy deciding what to do. Water was up to the baseboards. I waded out -- water up to my knees! -- and moved the car. Water sloshed into the floorboards, and even though I moved the car to higher ground, I still had to go back and scoop water out. Ick!

Well, water was quickly rising and was even threatening to broach the B&B porch itself, which holds their outdoor restaurant and wine bar. After hanging out a bit longer we decided it was best for us to just abandon this whole scene. We packed up and drove back to DC. As soon as we left the road cleared and the rain stopped. It was a nice drive back to DC, and we were back in our apartment by 10:00pm. Whew! Sunday was stressful returning of a water-damaged car... and we were very pleased to have Monday to just relax :)

Here is the high-water mark in the park. The water "only" went up to my knees out on the street, but in the park it was quite a bit deeper.

I unfortunately didn't get a before-photo of the pool... but it was a beautiful clean blue.

They say that this was a 100-Year Flood! So I guess we shouldn't worry about going back to try again :)

(Images courtesy of The Huffington Post, and herald-mail.com)