Weekly Wrap Up 9/3/16--A horrible no good terrible weekend away

Oh my did we have the worst weekend trip of our lives this past weekend!!!   We had just finished completing our unit on WWI and decided to take a trip to Kansas City to visit the WWI museum.  We  didn't leave until mid morning and drove 3 hours and arrived late afternoon.   We decided to head to the hotel swimming pool and relax for a few hours before dinner.  The hotel had an amazing hot tub which I loved.  After dinner we went to our room to just relaxed and began to plan our museum visit the next day.  All was going as expected and as planned until....

The sky's opened up and it began to storm.  It felt like the storm was directly over our heads.  Suddenly our phones started buzzing and announcing there were flash flooding in the area.  My son jumped up and looked out the window and announced "Hey Dad, there is a flood outside!"  My husband and I looked outside our window and saw the most horrifying sight.

A wall of water pouring down on parked cars...then it hit us...that is where we parked our mini van!

We rushed downstairs and found the hotel lower level beginning to flood and stared out the windows and saw our mini van getting absolutely drenched in water.  There water was rushing over top a retaining wall and the water was racing down the parking lot.  There was nothing we could do but watch and wait.

This is the hotel side lot with more rushing water

the road in front of the hotel

Cars were stuck and people had to be rescued!

As soon as the water resided a little we went to the car and attempted to move it to drier land.  When we opened the doors water poured out.  There must have been a minimum of 18 inches to 2 feet of water inside the van.

We borrowed a trash can from the hotel and began to empty the car of water.  This is the trunk area which was completely fill and unfortunately we had one of  third row  seat folded down which meant it was soak all the way thru.  While we were able to move the car most of the inside lights were on and we had trouble opening and closing the side doors, and the car would no longer lock and the alarm kept going off.  We assumed the electrical system has been damage

As quickly as the storm arrived it left after about an hour and the water stopped.  This is the wall where our car was parked and you can see the damage done to the retaining wall.  Above this retaining wall is another parking lot!

The view during the day of the damage done.

The next morning we called the insurance company to find out what we needed to do.  Due to the brackish water and how much water was in the mini van it is expected to be totaled.  Although we won't know until an insurance adjuster can look at it.  Because this happened on Saturday and there were many cars in need of a tow truck we were told to not drive the car and just leave it in the hotel parking lot and a tow truck would come by on Monday to collect the car.  We then had to call a rental car and try to find a car that we could use to take us back home.  We made a car reservations and the hotel drove us to the rental company that morning.  Upon arriving the rental car company told us they didn't have a car for us.  It was at this point I completely lost it.  What is the point of making a reservation online (with a live person I add) if they don't have any car in their lot.  To make a long story short a car was found for us after about 20 minutes and we drove home.  We never did make it to the WWI museum!!!