Bunnies and Baskets and Floods, oh my!

As requested, here are the pictures of Ev's Easter basket. Nothing says, "Some Bunny Loves You!" like an assortment of hoppy ales, tasty stouts and dark chocolates!

After Ev left for work, I drove down to Cairo with the kids to see if our house is under water yet. So far, so good! Cairo is still dry, but it sits at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, surrounded by a levee wall on the Ohio side and dirt levees on the Mississippi side. Both rivers have risen to about 53 feet now ... 14 feet above flood stage ... and expect to crest at 55 feet in the next couple of days.

To the right is a shot of the Mississippi River from the top of the Cairo levee. To the right of the levee, about 200 yards away, are the houses of Cairo. To the left of the levee, that dark, heavy tree line off in the distance is the normal bank of the river.

Below is a shot from the bridge to Missouri, where you can just barely make out a farm, or what's left of it, in the middle of what's usually a field.

This next shot is from the levee gate on the Ohio that (usually) leads to an access road for vehicles needing barge access. You can see the "No Parking" sign just past the flotsam. Downtown Cairo lies 200 feet behind me ... at the bottom of a steep hill.

Next, we drove across the bridge into Kentucky. The line of barges on the left are docked along what is normally the western bank of the Ohio River. Today the Ohio River extends from it's western bank to the hill leading up to the town of Wickliffe, five miles away.

These are raised train trestles in Kentucky. These are the lucky ones. Most of them were under water.

Between the two rivers is the southernmost tip of Illinois, a spit of land known as Fort Defiance. Ordinarily, Fort Defiance is a broad, grassy State Park with a tree-lined drive leading to a tower from which you can observe the muddy water of the Ohio and the clearer water of the Mississippi mixing and heading south to the Gulf of Mexico. Today we could only see the top of tower from the Kentucky bridge, sitting in the middle of the river with water up to the floor of the observation deck. This is the entrance to Fort Defiance ...

And a view from there of the bridges that link Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky.

It looks like this is about as bad as it's going to get here, and Cairo will survive the Flood of 2008 unscathed. But this Arizona desert native is duly impressed. That is one hell of a lot of water!

Happy Easter!

Kwach