Forest Fire

May 24-26, 2012

I have been neglecting my blogging duties for a few days.    This wasn’t a wise choice for a woman of my advanced years, because now I’m stuck trying to remember what we did a few days ago.    Here’s my best attempt at recounting:

*I put on my brightest yellow shirt and climbed to the top of the cliffs.   The idea was that Missy would stay below and take my picture from the ground.   I thought the yellow would be very visible, but when I got back down, Missy chastised me.  She claims the yellow was lost in the green of the trees, and she claims I didn’t get to the absolute edge for a neat photo.  Whatever.  It’s scary up there on the edge in the wind.   I told her she’s welcome to go up and show me how it’s done.   She has not done that yet.

*On Friday I drove up to the top of the road to get a signal to check if the Durango Library was open on Saturday.  (It was).   While there, I learned that there have been epic rains back in MN.   A miracle Memorial Weekend creeking opportunity.   I was really bummed that we were missing out on hanging out with and paddling with our peeps back in MN.   I am honestly jealous of the whitewater.   Here, the San Juan has dropped back into the “low” category.  So we haven’t been able to even try out the run in our backyard.   I tried getting ahold of Jeremiah to see how the paddling was going, but we weren’t able to connect.

*The winds have been active every day.   Most days they are constant at 20 mph, and on Saturday we had continuing gusts of 50-60mph.  It made it kinda miserable outside.  I think I would go crazy if I lived somewhere where there was constant wind.    On one of our walks with the dogs, we saw a huge pine tree blow over.   It went quickly and with little pre-cracking warning.   It was a neat thing to witness.

*We drove to Durango on Saturday.  We wanted to try the wifi at the newly completed library.   It was 55 miles away, and about a 1.5 hour drive.   Missy got pulled over for speeding in Pagosa Springs.   She actually sped past the cop, who I guess than had no choice but to stop her.   Luckily she was let off with a warning.   She commented that it was our usual Memorial Weekend ticket (Jeremiah historically gets those for non-seatbelt-use, but since he’s not with us, Missy filled in).  :-)

*The sky and air were very heavy with debris on Saturday.  My first thought was that it must be a fire.  When we got into phone range, we did discover that there’s a wildfire in our Forest.   It apparently started 10 days ago and was 70 acres, but then with the strong winds and no rain, it was now over 400 acres.   We spent some anxious moments working out where on the  map it was in relation to our camp.   Luckily, it’s not that close.    The shift in wind this morning was the first time smoke from the fire headed our way.   It was very eerie and interesting how far ranging the smoke coverage went.  We were in it all the way to Durango…felt like we were in LA smog.

*Awesome internet and awesome library in Durango.  It overlooked the Animas river, and we sat in comfy chairs in front of picture windows enjoying the view.    While getting our downloads, we looked into placed to go next.   Unfortunately the fire is in the area of where we were thinking of going next.  So we’re looking at several options, from Durango, to Sand Dunes National Park, to the Arches in Utah.   The good thing about this lifestyle is that we’re so free to choose where to go.  So stay tuned.

*After the library, we got some errands done.  We went to an RV place to pick up a anode rod for the water heater.  For a couple of weeks now, the kitchen sink hasn’t been working properly.   I did some google research and I’m confident that we’ll need to replace the anode rod and flush the water heater to get it fixed.   But, since we don’t have water hookup here, I’m not going to waste water draining the heater.   So now we’ll have the part ready.   I’ll do the fix once we run out of freshwater.   After the RV place, we went to Walmart and then headed back.

*We were shocked when we got to camp to see that we’d been invaded while we were gone.   A big group of people snuck into the few other sites in the loop.   Lots of dogs (including an adorable puppy).   If Missy hikes the cliff, we’ll try to get a picture of our newly crowded neighborhood.    There’s been a ton of ATVs going up and down the road.   We sorta thought this would happen on the holiday weekend.   It’s noisy, but hopefully we’ll only have to deal with it a couple of days.

*Cassie update: she’s doing better.   She’s no longer waking up stiff and sore.   I think she must have banged her back and got hurt.   Then, after a full night curled up sleeping, she just woke up stiff and sore.  Getting old in addition to being hurt.    I’m soooooooooo glad that she’s doing better.