Our unusually
warm winter left little snow in the mountains.
When the storm clouds came in the summer they were empty of water and
full of lightning. Soon wild fires were
burning all around us in Eastern Idaho and we
were downwind from the worst of them.
Smoke filled the air for weeks.
DH and I decided to take a little trip to the coast to get upwind of the
hazardous conditions and go where the humidity was above crispy.
We packed up our
Subaru and traveled north to Montana with the Pacific Northwest circled on our map.
There was no
getting away from the noxious air in Missoula Salmon River area.
When we arrived
in the Palouse Country of Eastern Washington we were met with blowing dust and
more smoke.
The nearer we
came to the Columbia River and Grand Coulee
Dam the thicker the smoke. What we
didn’t know was a storm front had passed through during the night and the
lightning had started several wild fires in central Washington
The hills above
Grand Coulee Dam had already been torched by another big fire only a few days
earlier.
We crossed the
river on our way to the Cascade Mountains and
were met by this.
A police
blockade was set up to stop traffic from driving into the inferno. We learned the fire was heading north but if
we hurried we could probably get around it before roads were closed in that
direction.
Um….yeah.
As we drove up
the river we could see smoke and flames along the canyon walls.
The wind was so
strong and fire so intense that it had jumped the river.
We were driving
parallel to the smoke and were finally able to drive around it and on to the
highway that took us up into the mountains.
There we
discovered another fire, also lightning caused, was in our path.
Worried we would
be turned back at any time we proceeded toward the place where we had
reservations for the night on the east side of the Cascades.
Needless to say
we were glad to get west and north of all the wildfires and settled into a new motel
overlooking a quiet stream. Although it
was of little comfort to watch a television news reporter standing where we had
been only hours before telling us about the devastation.
