09.19.2009 Wood, Smoke, Fire ...oh and the garage

Well Saturday started out fine. What could be better than spending 6 hours of un-interupted time with my oldest son? Actually not much. I haven't seen much of him lately, he's pretty much spent the last couple of weeks on campus or with his friends. So he came home this weekend bcuz Friday night we picked up a desk for my ofc and Saturday I needed his help getting our wood flooring. Ok Laminate for the wood floor snobs. To ME however, it is wood floors. It smells like wood and has a 35 yr warranty so it trumps carpet. I got an AWESOME deal, but had to drive all the way to Kalispell (3hrs one way) to get it. So i did. Only problem was i didnt realize it would equal 2 pallets worth and i brought the mini van. So long story short, I had to drive there AGAIN on Sunday (which took 8 hrs) for the rest. I'm not bitter...bcuz i have this...

65 Beautiful boxes of beautiful MAPLE flooring. Kitchen, Living room, Master Bedroom. I am a happy girl.

Oh then came the SMOKE. On our way back, as we came over the Mountain we saw tons of smoke. Our small smoldering little annoyance has erupted into a full blown forest fire. The likes of which we usually get in July around these parts. But the wind had kicked up something fierce and fanned this thing. We couldn't drive through town without being pelted by smoke, pine cones, debris the wind was blowing so hard. You couldn't see a thing. Erick could hardly breathe. It was not fun.

Ya, those aren't clouds. That is thick nasty smoke




After we unloaded the wood at the new house, we loaded up the kids and drove toward the FIRE. WHY? Because kids are curious things, and they've never seen a forest fire before. (Not that they could remember - 2 yrs ago we had one much more serious)
The whole ridge was on fire, and as it got darker the sky glowed orange.



It was pretty dark, so we couldn't see it all just what was peeking over the ridge. The bulk of the fire was in between the 2 Mountains so there was just tons of smoke!
Those little white spots are actually houses, so we were really worried.
By morning it was mostly contained, and we had gotten some rain which helped the firefighters. It was too windy for helicopters or anything. The air quality was alot better on Sunday.

The guys got alot of the garage done, I'll post that tomorrow with the progress Sunday as well.