I am sitting in front of the wood stove, blogging.

Let’s see, where did I leave off? We had spaghetti for dinner last night and treated ourselves to a few episodes of House Hunters International which were stored in the TiVo. It’s nice having the generator! We run it about 4 hours in the morning and then about 4-5 hours in late afternoon/evening. Otherwise it’s pretty darned quiet (and dark) around our house.

Here is a pic of our lifeline to the generator which is just outside of our basement.








Here is our iPad charging station.




And our cooking station!




It’s hard for anyone to imagine what being without power and water is like if you’ve never been through it. If not for last year’s five day power outage (at the very exact same time of the year, (see “On This Day” over in the blog’s margin if you don’t believe me) we would not have been as prepared as we are this time. One thing I wish I had thought of is handi-wipes. As conserving as we are of water it would help to be able to get our hands cleaner without soap or water.

Since we are not on any public utilities and are on a well we don’t have running water. Without water you can’t flush your toilet. You can’t wash your dishes, or your hands, or take a shower. We do have plenty of water reserves for flushing though since we filled up both bathtubs. And I heat water for washing in the kettle on top of the wood stove.

Pretty much you can’t do anything without power except light a fire in the fireplace.

Thank goodness Rick and I started out life together by doing a lot of camping so we kind of get it. But camping in your own house where you expect to have all the luxuries of our current century is no fun.

After a breakfast of a strip of bacon, a fried egg and a piece of whole wheat toast we went outside to pick up three limbs and branches that were littering our front yard. Lots of bending. Even though it was only 44 degrees F outside we were both working up a sweat.

After we cooled off from that activity we decided to take the dogs and drive into town to see if anything was open and how things had fared outside of our little community. What we saw did not raise our hopes any of getting our power back anytime soon. It looked like the only places open were McDonalds and Dunkin Donuts and they must have had generator power because Shop Rite and the whole strip mall associated with them was dark. You can see in this pic taken by Rick that the cart returns where all blown down.




We saw lots of downed trees, some affecting power lines. The West Milford side of town seemed to have gotten the brunt of the storm, while over on the Hewitt side the A & P was open and everything around it was open.
One gas station in town was open and selling gas but the line was longer than we could see the end of. They had two policemen routing traffic just for the gas station.

We passed one house that was consumed by a huge evergreen that had fallen and just missed crushing the entire house.




We tried to get further down the mountain but the road was closed, and several other roads in the are as well. Quite a mess.

We were supposed to go down our friends’ Andy & Linda’s house on the shore this coming weekend. I feel so badly for them. We heard this morning that although their house is still standing the damage is probably very bad. They were right in the area where Sandy came on shore and from what I understand their backyard basically backs up to the dunes.

October is definitely not New Jersey’s finest month if the past two October storms are anything to go by.

Just look how stressed the dogs are.

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Powerless in NJ and camping in the house

For sure harder to camp at home than at the cabin.  I feel for you guys (of course I did have to smile reading Rick’s Blog).  Hang in there!

Debra, problem is is that we don’t really camp at the cabin because we have all the creature comforts of home. There we still would have electricity from the solar panels or wind and we could still shower, watch TV and have real Internet access.  Rick’s post was humorous, wasn’t it? But also too true!

Hang in there!  Hopefully it won’t take as long this time as it did last time to get the power back.  Temps getting colder at night and highs will be dropping after this weekend.  Time to get out the goose down duvet!  Where is Andy and Linda’s house?  The whole NJ shore got hit so bad.  Was thinking that you probably wouldn’t be making that trip even if you did have power.

Sorry you are having to deal with not having power. I know that it is NOT fun, having been thru it myself a couple of times for days, but at least, (and this is a big one) I had water!! I know that you must be totally frustrated with the flushing/bathing situation.

The dogs look like they are dealing just fine! And probably EBay, too.

Thank goodness for the generator! I can really see the power of the wind in your photos, with the downed trees and the flattened cart returns. Glad the dogs are taking things in stride.