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Even though we don't currently own a home in Livingston, Montana, we still consider this eclectic mountain community our home. In addition to friends and family, it hosts a familiarity that we're happy to come home to after a winter abroad in the camper. We feel so blessed to have a cozy spot set up as our RV home base just on the edge of town.
Once the hub for Raymond's custom home construction business, this property serves now as RV pad and business center for other projects. Just south of town at the edge of Paradise Valley, this property doesn't sit along the Yellowstone River, but relatively near. You can imagine our shock when the Yellowstone experienced never-before-seen flood levels during this year's run-off.
We were actually at the kids' first golf tournament of the season at Big Sky Golf Resort when we began receiving calls from friends alerting us to the immense amount of water making its way out of Yellowstone National Park towards Livingston. With the help of my parents and dear friends, our camper was evacuated before flood waters began to rise. We rushed back to town to move as much of our reclaimed lumber, machines, miscellaneous belongings and supplies to higher ground.
The flood waters peaked in the middle of the night, and we spent that evening boon docking on a city street in front of our friend's house in town. Early morning light revealed the aftermath of the raging waters. For us, we found an enormous mess - piles of reclaimed lumber and mud on our shop property. We lost only a few personal items stored in a trailer that flooded. Most of our neighbors experienced severe flooding in their homes and businesses, and we feel so fortunate to have had the capacity to get our home-on-wheels out when we did.
Nevertheless, the water retreated and clean-up began. For us, clean-up efforts started at our local golf course, which was severely flooded. Sand, gravel, silt and river mud was left all over our beautiful 9-hole course, which lies along the banks of the Yellowstone River. It became clear that without the efforts of volunteers, our greens would suffocate under the river muck. Raymond has spent hours upon hours at the course, and the rest of us have all pitched in to help when we can. Although it's been tough to put our own clean-up on hold for awhile, it's been incredibly rewarding to be a part of a movement to save our golf course - a gift for our budding junior golfers! We're hoping to be back out on the course soon!
Fun Side Note: Stuart was "noodling" in one of the ponds left behind on the course after the flood and managed to get his hands on a nice sized trout. He promptly threw it back into the raging Yellowstone and wished it luck!
