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.