First-hand account

Well, I finally saw for myself the magnitude of what's been going on at the lakes around here. It really is pretty amazing.

Saturday night, Ang was singing with the band Wall Street out at Carlos and Charlie's, which is on Lake Travis. For those who don't know, CnC has two parts - the main restaurant and a patio area. The restaurant floats, but the patio is permanent.

A month ago, when we went boating on Lake Travis, we went to CnC and you had to walk up what amounted to about two stories worth of stairs to get from the boat dock to the patio/street level. When I went on Saturday, the water was at patio level - whoa!!

Ang told us that CnC's management had told Wall Street the band might have to wrap things up early, because the lake level was supposed to rise throughout the evening. I guess they were opening up dam gates again. In any case, throughout their show, you'd see people slipping over to the side of the stage to see where the water level was as it crept up the stairs that would normally lead down to the docks (which were now floating right next to us). Just before midnight, the water finally breached the patio, and that was it for the show - the band had to stop so they could get their equipment put away before it got wet! Crazy.

I've never seen the lake this high. I admit, I don't get out there as much as I'd like to. The last time we had flooding like this, in 1998, I think, I saw Town Lake incredibly high, but what I saw Saturday was way more impressive.

Mother Nature. She'll put you in your place.