I wanted to bring this info to the attention of all of our neighbors. I
never imagined that our dryer vent was packed full and clogged. 

Everyone needs to be aware of this potential hazard. I do remember this being mentioned some time ago and we always clean the lint from the outside but never completely took off the vent cover. 
  
We were having trouble with our dryer not drying very well, so we decided to check the dryer exhaust from outside to see if a bird had nested and it was packed full of lint. I reached my arm inside the vent and pulled out a lot of lint. I could see down the tube with a flashlight that ours was pretty clogged.  

We bought a snake tool designed to clean out the vents. We worked to snake it through from the inside out, but could not get it to go around an angle in the exhaust in the floor, so we tried from outside in. I could only get the snake in about 15 feet and it would stop. It pulled a lot of wet compacted lint out with it but I could see through the vent that it was still pretty clogged up. 

I was about to call in a chimney sweep because I was worried about causing a fire, when our neighbor suggested using his leaf blower. We got the blower tube into the vent from the inside as far as we could. We waited several minutes before anything came out. It eventually blew quite a bit of lint out of the vent, I think we got a about a bushel of lint out of the vent.  

I know that the chimney sweeps can do this job too but the leaf blower did quite well.