Sheet Mountain, an Innkeepers Day

So things got a little crazy and I didn’t finish the post I had intended for this week. It all started out as a typical Innkeepers summer week in Vermont…

quiet walk down to the pond

…quiet walks down to the pond.

calm seyon pond

Beautiful sunsets.

serious cousins

We squeezed in a celebration  of my cousin’s marriage. We take cousin get together’s very seriously.

leaking window

It was upon our return chaos broke out. This is the window well to the basement. All that dark brown you can see is water. We went from, ‘Oh cool, a nice thunder and lightening storm’ to ‘Oh no, the lodge is flooding’ in less than five minutes.

window well full of water

Next thing we know there was torrential down pour and this window well completely filled with water that gushed into the basement…

sheet mountain

…and we had quilters!!! In the three years we have worked here we have never had this serious of a leaking issue. We said, ‘Ah! The quilters!’ and raced around to create a sheet mountain to keep the water from flowing into the conference room with all their quilting machines.

trench

Chris ran outside to dig a trench (this picture is from the next day) and furiously bailed out the window.

mopping

I kept mopping as fast as I could and meanwhile upstairs, our other team member Megan kept cleaning up and setting the table for breakfast.

Chris is all wet

Chris was so soaked he might as well had not even been wearing rain gear.

walk way

In the morning we walked down our canyon of pathway to see how the grounds looked.

boats floating away

Down at the pond, we found the boats like this!

boats up

Thank gosh they didn’t go over!

all the boats

We keep four boats on shore and those two just got carried away as the water rose. Take a look at how full and sinking some of those boats were at the docks.

Adam with broken stool

And just when we thought calmness would descend upon us, Adam, who along with team member Kathryn who spent nearly all day cleaning and bailing boats, sat down and this stool randomly broke right under him. Luckily, he did not fall, but we realized the chaos was not over.

stool still standing

Although this stool, now with only three legs, did stand, out to the burn pile it went.

seyon pond

Just like that, we are back to chirping birds and blue skies. As my high school English teacher used to say, “Out of chaos comes order.” Perhaps every once in a while we need a little dumping of chaos to restore order to life. Perhaps not. Either way, life, with all it’s ups and downs will continue to happen around all of us. So we might as well prepare ourselves to be ready to handle whatever it throws our way. And if that means having a massive pile of sheets on hand for any cause, then we are ready to go.

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8 Responses to “Sheet Mountain, an Innkeepers Day

  • That’s horrible to come back from a nice weekend straight into disaster! Hopefully it’s all ending well.

    • tiffany
      9 years ago

      Oh the quilters just kept on quilter. We threw together sheet mountain real quick and all was well.

  • Wow! Looks like a disaster to me! Hope what ever was “breeched” can be repaired. All staff did a great job but the broken stool brought a smile to my face! Also might be the only time to tell Chris “you are all wet” LOL

    • tiffany
      9 years ago

      Oh it will be. This was torrential flooding. The near by town of Barre had three feet of water on main street and going into businesses, so I think we got off lucky with one leaky window. The stool however, that was just random it broke on the same day. All is dry now and we are one less stool.

  • Oh what a mess! Even through all the rain though, I can’t help but look at those floors and say how pretty.

    • tiffany
      9 years ago

      Oh those floors were pretty after that! Oh yes they were. We got it all cleaned up and luckily the quilters stuff didn’t get touched and everything was fine.

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