Change in Plans and More Fires!

Our summer was all laid out for us; Planting, Alaska, Harvesting, Hunting. Three out of four of those remain the same, the Alaska one has changed. Why? Several reasons. That schedule would have left me away from home for almost 9 months and with everything we have going on, that is just too much this year. 

Plus, we have a wedding or two we can hopefully now attend. I can maybe finish the floor on the boat, I can maybe put the soffit and facia on the garage and even squeeze in a trip to the Oregon coast. While we are disappointed, all is not totally lost, we will get up to The 49th next year.  

After last week's excitement, we were ready for a relatively quiet week. It started off that way with lows in the single digits and ended with highs in the 70's! 

The week did not end quietly, however. Barb and I were relaxing on the couch when our phones blew up with an Emergency Alert with a report of a forest fire that had started about a mile or so away from our house. At the time, it was 2 acres and the winds were relatively light blowing away from our house. They ordered evacuations of the immediate area which did not include our road so, although we were concerned, we carried on watching our show. 

Here's a little perspective. The image below shows the Qury Fire from last week. That one got to over 9,000 acres. The Sundance fire was 2 acres at the time. We are the blue dot. 

Texts started coming in from neighbors as well as phone calls from friends making sure we were aware of the situation and offering places to stay should we need it. More alerts came in, still not including our road, so we just sat tight. Soon, we started to see helicopters with dump bags flying by the house. Our nearest water source is about 20 miles away and the helicopters were going back and forth. Then came the next alert, the fire had spread ....

15 minutes later, came the alert we were dreading, the evacuations now included our road. Not good. I jumped on the side by side to go check out the situation. These videos were taken from the south end of our property.  As you can see, while close, there is plenty of woods between us the fire and the wind was blowing away from us, so I called Barb and told her to stay put and we would monitor it. 

While I was back there Kevin called me and said they had ordered a tanker in from Colorado and it would be here within the hour. The concern was that there are a lot of houses in this area and they needed to get it stopped soon. A little while later, sure enough, here came the tanker!

Once the tanker dropped its load, all the aircraft left. I do not know if it was because the fire was contained or that they do not fly at night. It ended up that that dump did the job and while still burning, they had contained it to 25 acres. Whew!

Here are a few pictures I pulled off Facebook from the Argyle Fire Department page...

Here is something I bet many of you do not think about when it comes to wildfires. While it is stressful enough to have to evacuate, there are so many things that go through your mind. What do we take? What do we leave behind? Not knowing when you return if anything will remain. But around here, there are other considerations like livestock. Horses, cattle.... Our neighbors have horses, cattle, goats and chickens. What do you do with them? If you have time, you load your horses up and move them. If you do not have time, you just open the gates, let them loose and hope for the best. That was the case with the Qury fire where the winds were 50-70mph, there was no time and it was dark, so people just opened their gates and let their animals loose. This week there are all sorts of Facebook posts from people who are either looking for horses or who have found loose horses. One person even wrote their phone number on the horse's hoof, what a great idea!

I hope this is our last wildfire post, but with the lack of rain/snow, I am afraid it is not. 

Barb went to a local dentist this week as well! Why you ask? Barb's jaw is still sore from the extraction and titanium post she had put in while in Mexico almost a month ago. Concerned that something was just not right she made an appointment with a dentist in Hot Springs. The first thing they wanted to do was a complete set of x-rays to the tune of $350. We literally just had a full set done last month, so Barb called Sani Dental in Mexico, and they emailed her x-rays to this dentist! During the appointment the dentist looked at everything Sani Dental had done and said everything looked good and was healing as it should be. Total bill....$35. That has to be the cheapest dental visit ever known to man. And to a dental office we have never been to before no less. I think it was more peace of mind for Barb knowing things are as they should be. 

And last, but not least we got together with Ryan and Alana for a puppy playdate and a cave tour! They came down on Saturday for a tour at Wind Cave. While we have been to several cave tours here, it has been a few years, and we always learn something new. More likely I forget what they said last time, either way it was a great tour. 

Then it was back to the house to enjoy the 70-degree weather and let the dogs play. It is so hard to get pictures of them as they run around, but I managed to snap this one as they were running by Dakota. 

Next week the weather rollercoaster continues with a high of 79 on Wednesday and a low of 28 on Thursday. What a crazy time of year!