Country Living.. Very wet winter for around here.

I've been meaning to post some pictures of our muddy roads several times this winter and just haven't gotten around to it. I finally did take some pictures after our last rain that we got and am actually going to get them posted.

Overall, we really enjoy living out in the country. About the only negative is the fact that the roads can be difficult when it rains. We live 2 miles off pavement with 1 1/2 miles of that being county roads and 1/2 mile of that is our driveway. Believe it or not, our driveway is not the problem, the county roads are.

After a big rain or even worse, a steady rain or even worse than that, melting snow, the roads get pretty bad. This year has been the worst year in the 11 years that we've lived out there.

I've posted pictures like this of the muddy roads before.

But this time after they dried up a bit and the ruts were still there, I got out and took a picture to show how deep those ruts actually are!

In case you haven't measured one recently, a coke can is just under 5" tall. That would mean that the ruts are between 10" - 12" deep here. We didn't do anything special to make the ruts deeper or wider than any other time, we just drove in them to get back and forth to the house until the road dried up enough and then we straddle the ruts until the county grades the road again.

Thankfully the county does grade the road fairly regularly after a big rain or snow, but it is very important to get that first set of tracks in as straight as possible so you can straddle them after it dries up. When it is still wet, the road is strictly one lane as there is no way you could get out of the ruts to pass someone if you tried. You actually don't even need to hold onto the steering wheel, the wheels just bounce back and forth and it feels like you are inside a pinball machine almost. It feels that way whether you are trying to steer or not.

There is no doubt that we would have been unable to get back and forth to the house this year without both of our vehicles being 4 wheel drive. My company vehicle is a Chevy Trailblazer and when the ruts get deep like they are in the picture, it ends up dragging high center periodically. If you are in the ruts, that means the road isn't dry enough to straddle the ruts so it basically just plows through the mud, but this year has been a chore to keep the vehicles even remotely free of mud. On both vehicles we've had to wash the wheels to get the mud off several times because the mud stuck to the wheels was causing them to be way out of balance and the vehicle would be shaking violently at anything over 50 mph.

Spring is here, so hopefully no more snow, but I haven't hear whether this is supposed to be a wet spring and summer or not. They said that this was going to be a wet winter and they definitely got that right!

That's it for now. Nathan