Wallow Fire Madness

On Memorial Day weekend Josh and the kids and I rode up to Black River to take the boys fishin for the day. We had heard that a fire had started south of Hanegan Meadow. As we took the Auger Canyon road to the river we passed through some smoke but things seemed normal at the river. The wind was ferocious the next few days and that little smoke tower turned into a giant plume you could see for miles around. The sights in town were eerie. The sun was out but the smoke made it seem like night, with orange shadows cast down. It burned your eyes and nose just to go outside. Eventually Facebook pages and websites were sprouting up with up to date information about the fires progress towards town. I was so restless checking online every few hours just to see if our town was safe. Eventually the county began evacuations of Alpine and Nutrioso. I was still in denial that they would ever evacuate Eagar. A few days later denial was just a river because we were being told to leave. Josh and I decided to make the best of it and go to the Valley for a few days. We stayed by Marcia and went to the drive-in movies and took the kids to Big Surf. They got to swim all week and I was glad to see that leaving Florida didn't affect their fish like abilities! Sunday we decided we had to come home evacuation or not, we had to work Monday. Luckily before we even got on the road they lifted the evacuation. Coming home was strange, the roads were mostly empty and we were the only ones home on our street. We are thankful that we had something to come home to, unlike some less fortunate. We had faith that our home was just material things and that we would be fine anywhere, but luckily we didn't have to make good on our promise of faith and things are beautiful as ever.