Feliz cumpleanos por mi padre. . .

A bit late, but never forgotten (since the internet access returned). . .

Today is the 73rd birthday of Herbert Lee Eidson, my dad, and the greatest man I know.

What did my dad do on his birthday? Went to work in a small pharmacy in Wisconsin for a full day and then went to Fish-Fry Friday afterward.

Happy birthday dad!

Storm. . .

As you can see, some of the trees fell out right from the roots (above) and others snapped off a big higher.

Storm. . .

In addition to the trees that came down, branches fell around the grounds as well.

Storm. . .

This is the Hummingbird tree house, which is farther back on the property. A large tree fell out of the ground, roots and all, quite a distance away from the tree house. However, when the big one fell, it took out about 12 to 15 more trees, and two ended up hitting the roof of the overlook on the Hummingbird.

Fortunately, the only real damage was a couple of dents in the roof, which can be easily repaired.

Whereas before, there was a dense forest outside of the Hummingbird, it's now nearly completely clear after we hauled away all of the fallen branches and trees.

Storm. . .

This is the pathway from the rancho to the tree houses. Quite a few of the smaller trees fell or larger branches snapped off up high and came down.

An hour or two after the wind stopped (it was just completely calm afterward, almost eerily so) we could hear branches and trees falling around the area.

There were only two guests here at the time, the others were up in La Fortuna on activities, and the guests here thought it was a grand experience, asking if this was a regular occurrence. We assured them it was not.

Blow me down. . .

 On September 11, it was raining a bit after breakfast, and then it started pouring.

Shortly after that, the wind picked up, and by picked up, I would estimate 40 to 50 mph gusts, at least. This went on for 20 to 30 minutes.

When you're surrounded by as many trees as we are here at the hotel, high winds make us nervous. We had never had winds anywhere close to this level in the nearly four years we've

been here, and the folks that grew up here couldn't recall anything like this, either.

Some folks said they saw a funnel cloud, and power lines, trees (even a couple of roofs) were falling all over the place.

We probably had 30-plus trees fall. No one was hurt here or in the area (though one cow wasn't as lucky as it was taken out by a falling tree). There was damage to the rancho, where we serve breakfast, but it was on the back part, not on the kitchen or the dining area.

In the picture above, is the top of the tree that came down on the rancho. It was probably 100-plus feet tall, and it just fell out of the ground at its roots. You can see the damaged roof at the rear of the rancho on the left.

We'll post some more pictures of the storm damage. It will probably be a couple of weeks before we can get everything cleaned up.

Whole lotta shaking. . .

Yesterday, we were at breakfast in the rancho with guests, when everything started moving, swaying and shaking. It took a few seconds to register that it was an earthquake, and a pretty powerful one.

Lights and fans swayed, a few things fell off the shelves, but no major damage at Tree Houses, thankfully.

I felt a little seasick, as the cement floor we were standing on, felt like a waterbed, rolling up and down.

The quake, a 7.6 magnitude temblor, was centered over on the Pacific Coast in the Nicoya region, which is quite a distance from us.

People felt the quake all the way on the Caribbean side and up into Nicaragua, also.

For the folks that work here: Miguel, Keneth, Darling, Patricia and Seidy, they said that was the largest one that they have experienced. No one was hurt, and Miguel and I walked all the tree houses afterward and no damage done to the inside or to the supports on them.

Hopefully that was the last one we'll experience down this way for a long, long time.