Saturday, August 29, 2015

Montana Adventure Day 15

Last night the wind blew and blew!  My little trailer only weighs 3700lbs so it rocked!  Sleep was a distant thought until the wind stopped-there was a little thunder and lightening thrown in as well.  I had books to read so no big deal, just read until the wind stopped or I was too tired to keep my eyes open.  This morning when I got up it was to SMOKE!!  That thunder and lightening last night started a fire about 12 miles SE of Dillon, sage brush and grass mostly but by morning it was already on the large incident fire report.  It seems that all of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and NW Montana are burning.  So many fires and resources are spread VERY thin.  The smoke was so thick I could not see the pioneer mountains and the asthma kicked in so most of the day was spent in the camper.  We did get a touch of cabin fever in the afternoon and went to Clark Canyon Dam and Reservoir.  This is a Lewis and Clark site-there are many in Montana and they have done a great job documenting them.  this is the only one we visited this trip-I've done so much work on Lewis and Clark with the Trails Museum that it no longer holds much appeal to me.  You'd think I'd be more interested but the truth is I've been to so many sites and they are mostly the same, this one a bit more specific to the site so it was interesting.  Plus Quinn and I got to take a walk somewhere other than the campground.




You can really see the smoke in this one.  Normally, there would be mountains in the background. 


A replica dugout
Tonight the northern lights are supposed to be visible-I'll set the alarm but I'm afraid the smoke will interfere.

1 comment:

a good yarn said...

We've seen the wildfires on TV here but no mention of Montana. Last week a large contingent of Australian and New Zealand bush fire fighters left Australia to join there US colleagues. Locally, our crews have been trying to undertake preventative work through back-burning. Like you, I was kept indoors because of all the smoke triggering my asthma. We have bush quite close to Sydney - it's basically ringed by national parks. Don't know much about Lewis & Clarke and only recently learned they were English. I'm sure I watched a couple of episodes of a Ken Burns style program about them.