Heavy rain caused this road-blocking mudslide near the Orca Adventure Lodge in Cordova, Alaska.

CORDOVA, Alaska — A predicted strong storm that approached central Alaska over the weekend turned out to be every bit as vicious as expected.

We hunkered down through the rain — 17 inches fell over the past three days at the Cordova harbor — and wind in our 24-foot RV,  where I passed the time reading and tying flies.

We came through relatively unscathed.

Well, sort of.

Mark Taylor passes the time during a nasty storm tying flies in his rented RV.

The storm disrupted ferry service from Cordova on Saturday and Sunday. Now there is a backlog of passengers trying to get out of here. Unsure of how long we wanted to stay, we came here on a one-way ticket. Not good.

After reaching the ferry terminal early Sunday morning – after I had to pull trees from a mudslide out of the road – we were told we couldn’t even get on the standby list to get out of here until we had a reservation. The soonest we could get a reservation is Monday, Sept. 24 – three days after my scheduled departure from Anchorage, and four days after my friend Kraig Cesar is supposed to fly out.

The folks at the ferry terminal seem confident that we’ll be able to get out of here on Wednesday. I hope so as any later would be really risking our ability to get out of here on time.

A screen capture of NOAA radar shows the extent of the storm hitting Cordova, Alaska, on the weekend of Sept. 15.

The bad news is, forecasters are saying another round of bad weather is headed this way for Tuesday evening and Wednesday. If the Wednesday ferry gets canceled, we both will be hosed.

It would be less frustrating if we could at least pass the time by fishing. But all the rivers are blown out. Way out.

Ibek Creek, where we had good action on Thursday and Friday, is at least 3 or 4 feet above the level from those days. I doubt it will drop to fishable levels for at least a few days.

There is not a lot else to do here. We already toured the Cordova Museum, which was small but interesting.

This morning we went to the U.S. Forest Service shooting range outside of town and blew through about 200 rounds with Kraig’s .45 Sig Sauer pistol. That killed an hour.

Maybe we’ll do some hiking, or even grouse hunting.

There’s even a spot that my friend Chris Batin — who said “You have to come to Cordova,” so is getting the blame for getting us into this mess — said might be fishable today.

The priority will be showing up at the ferry terminal early every morning and hoping the others ahead of us on the standby list don’t show up.

I would love to get in another day or two of silver salmon fishing. But I’d rather get home on time.