This was the forecast for Hurricane Florence when we made the decision, like most everyone else in the Wilmington area, to evacuate on Tue, Sept. 11th. The "M" for Major Hurricane hitting the coast is Carolina Beach and it was expected to be a Cat 4. Yikes!
Luckily, we were invited by the Henson family to stay in one of their family's rental cabins in the Valle Crucis area, so we packed up and headed to the mountains. It was such a weird feeling leaving the island and not knowing what was going to happen and what we were going to come home to. But we had to go and just watch the Weather Channel from afar and hope for the best. And we lucked out big time in that it dropped to a Cat 2 and quickly a Cat 1 as it made landfall, but the flooding was still catastrophic for much of North Carolina making major roads like 40 impassable, so we were "stuck" in the mountains for over a week. Good thing we were in such a beautiful place with friends and family and had so much fun. The boys seriously thought they were on vacation! They fished, played in multiple creeks/rivers, picked up lots of bugs and stuff, ate s'mores by campfires, hiked and more!
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| Our humble abode and surrounding property |
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| Once of many fish |
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| First morning |
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| River at Valle Crucis Park |
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| Candy Barrel |
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| Mountain boys |
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| With Casher and Wonder Woman |
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| Finding salamanders with Lindsay |
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| Hike #1 |
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| Beautiful view |
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| Boys in a river |
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| Randomly ran into Crew's best friend, Van, from preschool at a local park |
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| Gemma and Crew |
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| Seven, Crew and Kingston |
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| Lindsay, Kari, me and a bunch of kids |
