I blogged a few days ago about Dwayne walking down the river bed that runs through the campground (
http://trekincartwrights.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-santa-clara-river.html). I didn't go then because I was wearing sandals and it didn't seem wise.
A few days ago, we had walked down to the check-in center to talk to the membership person there, and on our way back, we decided to try walking back via the river bottom:
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| It was a beautiful clear day - but kind of windy, and would be against us on our way back to the campsite, so we figured that down in the river bottom it might be less windy... |
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| We found easy access (actually that vehicles had traveled)... |
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| It was really quite beautiful, though branches were caught up in bunches that had evidently been carried down by the river. |
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| There was one area where it was quite damp/wet with a small amount of standing water in puddles. When Dwayne had walked down the river, he only got to this point because just a week before, it was muddy enough to discourage walking through it. |
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| Down in the river bottom we were definitely protected from the wind. |
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| This is coming up to the crossing within the campground that is currently closed... |
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| I had not noticed previously that the culvert ends were disconnected from the ones still in place under the road. |
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| Another view - the ones at this end were not underwashed as much and largely stayed in place, while the ones at the other end collapsed with the ground washed out from under them. |
The membership lady came by our campsite on Sunday (she was driving by on her golf cart and we were out getting things packed up to leave on Monday). We asked her about the flood - it was pretty interesting - here are the things I remember her saying:
- It occurred about 3 months ago (I later looked up information online and it was the beginning of August, so about 4 months ago).
- There had been a flash flood warning for Acton, CA, but the weather was pretty clear at the campground and they didn't worry about it. There was a short rain (maybe 10-15 minutes) at the campground, but nothing to take notice of.
- She and a ranger heard an odd noise and drove off in a golf cart to investigate. When they got to the river side, a huge amount of water was coming down the river and rapidly rising. They quickly drove the golf cart up to higher ground.
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| For some reason, the campground map for this campground is not online, so I'm including pictures from the hardcopy map. We stayed in section N which is way up the hill, and which is across the "bridge" (where the "X" is) that is closed. |
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| She said that they drove down to the "C" area - which is right along the river - in fact, there is a dirt track that crosses the river there - that's the dirt "road" that we walked along and that I indicated vehicles had traveled on in one of the earliest pictures above. That's where they saw the river now raging down. She said that none of the campsites ever were under water. |
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| This is the far end of the campground from where we are staying - she said that this area of the campground was under water (and that's the family pool with the "X" that is currently closed). |
- She and the ranger drove the golf cart down to where the bridge is - she estimated that water was 8' deep there. Her husband was on the other side of the bridge, having come down from their rig (which is parked in N where we were). They had radios and could communicate with each other.
- There was also a helicopter overhead doing rescues. The helicopter was able to communicate via a speaker with her husband that there was a family in the campground engaging in dangerous activities on her side of the river - he was able, by radio, to tell her the situation and she went to check. A couple with 4 small children were down at the river, holding the smaller kids over the water so they could dabble their feet in the water - while the bank on which they were standing was being washed out under them (unbeknownst to them). The lady was able to shout to them enough to get them to come back from the edge.
- She said that the water was up for about 8 hours and then pretty much went away. Downtown Acton (the small town near us) was under water. One of the other RVers had gotten into his pickup at the Ace Hardware when the flood hit and it started moving his truck sideways. The ground under the Metro train tracks was being washed out so they stopped the train. Although the conductor was giving messages to the passengers that all was ok, they could see water around the train and felt the train move sideways, so they tried to escape the train car (with no success).
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