We’re in Peabody, Mass, at the Homewood Suites. Power went out late Thursday night and we awoke to a mess—ice covering everything.
All night long it was like gunfire outside. I could hear the trees snapping off and falling—all night. Thankfully the boys—and Debi—slept through it all!
Epping looks like a tornado hit it, with trees and powerlines down every where. We had the tops of 4 pines around the house come off—nothing close enough to the house to do any damage, but a couple were down across the driveway and needed to be cleared out. We went to McDonald’s for breakfast—it was one of the only places in town with power. They couldn’t take credit cards and their registers weren’t working, and they had a line out the door. Right after we got our food, *their* power went out!
We decided to go to a hotel, but everything around either was already booked or didn’t have any power, so we decided to try down here. On the way down, I was down to my last ½ gallon of gas when we finally found a gas station that was open. All the way down Route 1 to Newburyport, there was no electricity. The first gas station we passed had about 2 dozen cars lined up, so we went a little further down and found one with a more reasonable line.
The good news is that the hotel gave us a ‘storm rate’ so we’re just paying $99 per night, which is about half the regular rate. So we’re gonna make the most of it and go into Boston today. We’ll be here for two nights (at least) since they’re saying it could be *days* before we have any power. Right now about half the homes (or maybe more) in NH don’t have any power and it’s the same through northern and western Mass, upstate NY, and Vermont and Maine.
The boys have spent their time playing their Nintendos, watching TV, and bugging us to go in the pool.
(I originally sent this out via e-mail yesterday, so pardon any tense errors.)
UPDATE: Looks like power is still out in Epping and the gas situation has not improved:
Powerless Gas Pumps Fuel Anxiety. The hotel we are in has quite a few other 'storm refugees.' The manager told us a lot of people in similar situations have only made one night's reservation and according to the news, the extra out of state crews may be arriving late today, and the temperature in the teens today will make it difficult for much work to get done. I'm hoping we can get back tomorrow, but something tells me it might be Tuesday before we have power. We'll see.
