Fire watch all day again. This time I’m just looking at the imagery every 6 hours from the satellite view of hot spots, for two fires in our valley. One is 25 miles away, but the others are “down” to 7 miles away. Thankfully. Today was mostly watching the planes and tankers go over our pasture and house, and visiting with friends, by phone and in person. John picked a bunch of yellow straight-necked squash, and a few of our new variety of ever bearing (day neutral) strawberries. They are so much better than the first type – now about 3 years old and never having produced berries we liked. We will have them on ice cream tonight. We were late getting out the blog, and still might not make it before the end of Sunday. Too much going on. It was not posted until Monday a.m.
Monday, Aug 11
I stayed home today to tackle the stacks of stuff we moved out of the den to the front porch so John could move out the old kitchen fridge and move in the new. The old is still working so it is currently sitting in the den/dining room, off the kitchen, so we can unload and clean it, and move it to the garage eventually. It has been so slow going through years of stuff. I am making progress but not fast enough for the approaching rain predicted. The boxes (some open) are out in the open. More excitement tonight with large smoke plumes from the northern fires in Wilson and Naneum canyons 6 miles away from us. It is going to alter a lot of beautiful countryside, wildlife, and recreation areas, trails for horses, hiking, and hunting. Still there is much of unburned parts inside the “fire perimeter.”
Below are some images and videos from tonight:
First, below is a view from my friend, Celia Winningham, on Thomas Rd with a better view of Wilson Creek Canyon than we have. The plume on the left is in Wilson Creek Canyon; the one on the right is in Naneum Canyon.
Then about 20 minutes later — here’s mine from the end of our driveway, followed by some links to a couple of videos I took tonight – mostly of the firefighting support teams streaming up and down our road all day. Celia is about ¾ of a mile west of us and seems to have used a lens with a bit more zoom. She doesn’t have a view into the canyon but the opening shows more from her location than from ours.
Personnel Moving from Naneum Canyon 8-11-14 for the night
Water Truck Around Our Curve & Headed North 8 11 14
Tuesday, Aug 12
Usually, our Emeritus Geography faculty meeting meets the second Tuesday of the month, but it was cancelled because of conflicts of a couple of members. I went to the dentist for a repair on the edge of a gold crown. It was not as bad as expected. I delivered many yellow squash to the staff, and stopped by a friend’s on the way home, to leave more. Those folks were having a potluck luncheon in their home with people from a senior group at their church, and they invited me to stay. I met everyone, and encouraged everyone there to take some squash home. They were thrilled. The hostess asked me to stay and eat and handed me two plates, one to take a plate home for John. I just filled two plates and packed them home for our lunch. There was enough food for supper too.
I was happy to send a clear-of-new-fires report early this morning. Our Snag Canyon fire is still getting under control (no new fires outside the perimeter), but the South Cle Elum Ridge fire, while okay over night, sparked 3 new hot spots this morning.
I am sad to report our Brittany, Shay, died today. She is the one that went missing awhile back – then was found in a hay field a mile south. She is better off – and we know where she is, so there is closure. I am very happy we located her when she was gone for a couple of days and nights, and she spent her last week with us. 14 years is a long time for a Brittany, and she leaves behind many fond memories and a lot of wonderful offspring with happy families. John buried her while I was in town.
Late afternoon we had our favorite plumber come and fix the hot water tank shut off valve, which was giving us only a very small flow of water (not enough to take a shower, wash dishes, or clothes). He replaced the entire unit because the old one had stripped its threads and could not be opened to what was needed – limited in-flow restricted the out-flow of hot water. The blue line is PEX, replacing copper, and the simpler red handle ball valve replaces a brass circular-handle gate valve
While here, we had him fix the broken in-flow line to the bathroom toilet that Shay tangled with. That was just one of the places (but the only one that caused a problem) she tried to go (hide?, or what?) as her cognition deteriorated. Fortunately, we have another toilet in the back bathroom. The plumber was so busy when we first called, that he couldn’t squeeze us in until now. He said business was back to what it was prior to the housing boom (and 2007 bust) and the recession that followed beginning in 2008. Some of the small businesses, such as electricians and plumbers, are gone so the remaining ones are busy in this more normal period.
It rained for 3 hours last night, and even though John had my boxes of stuff covered with tarps, they got a little wetter than he might have wished. Today, expecting more thunderstorms tonight, he backed the horse trailer up to the front fence and loaded them in there. Later, all the horses wandered over to the green grass under the fruit trees because he forgot to close the gate, but brilliantly, he rattled a can of grain and led them back to where they belong. John can clean up some of the stuff where they wanted to go and then close the front gate (at the end of the driveway by the road). Then they can go for a little grass.
I glanced out the back window this afternoon and a mama quail with only one chick was strutting by. We have been seeing larger bevies but not so close. They do like to stir through the wheat straw we put down on the backyard dog paths. Often they will show up just about dusk and usually there will be a sentry on the top of a fence post. [On Saturday night as we are finishing this blog, there are about 32 adults sifting through the weed seeds in the corral outside our back bedroom window (with a sentry on the corner post)].
Wednesday, Aug 13
I went to the Food Bank and on to SAIL exercise. Sadly, once there I heard about the death of 3 friends I have made over the past 4 years since going to the Senior Center. I carried a stack of magazines, and some moccasins, some other stuff we no longer need, and a bunch of yellow squash from our garden, to put on the free-take-please table. On the way home, I dropped off more squash at Briarwood Commons Retirement home, and visited with the folks in the main recreation room. I know many of them from our monthly visits to play music there on a Saturday. From there I was off to neighbors where I left the rest of the squash. We had more rain in the evening.
Thursday, Aug 14
Music at the Rehab Nursing home, and John went to town with me to get some gasoline in my car, to go by the grocery for some things, and to get a bag of Equine Senior for our oldest horse, Ebony. While we were playing music, the clouds rolled in and it rained very hard for 20 minutes. I didn’t know it until later, but John spent that time in the grocery store waiting for the rain to stop, and grabbed a piece of pizza at the deli while he waited. Once it subsided, he went out to my car, and found the seats were wet because he left the windows down a little so it wouldn’t heat up. We only had 5 people playing today, but we played for the entire hour and made many folks happy. We even sang happy birthday to one of the fellows. The one older lady who always gets up and waltzes with her walker did again today, 4 times. She sings the words as she sashays around, all the while smiling. The residents and the caregivers always applaud her.
I had to wait a few minutes for John to arrive. He had not had time for the other planned stops, so we did them together. First, we stopped at Grocery Outlet for canned cat food, ice cream, and lettuce. On to the gas station to fill up my car, which only had a little over a gallon left. Price is still too danged high here ($3.99/gallon). That’s hard to take when just last week in Yakima, we paid 20¢/gal less, and especially knowing the U.S. average is 50¢/gal less. Then on home through the hardest rainstorm we have been in since years ago in Iowa. It had rained hard at our house too, and was still raining when we arrived, but not as dramatically as when we were driving home. The wipers could not keep up, and the noise was so great, I had to hang up my cell phone, while talking to John’s sister, Peggy. We couldn’t hear anything, except the pounding of raindrops.
Friday, Aug 15
John took off early for 7 AM breakfast at Snoqualmie Pass Summit Pancake House with some of the WTA work crew – then back this way 4 miles to the Gold Creek Trail, a 136-mile roundtrip. About 7 years ago upper Gold Creek was swept by a ½ mile wide snow avalanche that came down from a near vertical area on the east side, and carried across the creek and up the west side that was heavily forested.
Much mayhem to the trail has been corrected except for one makeshift stepping stones stream crossing. A proper flat top double-log bridge will be in place by Sunday afternoon. This is in a wilderness area so only hand tools are allowed. (Photo next week.) I slept in for much-needed rest, and worked a lot this morning on emails. Finally, I grabbed a frozen Carl’s JR biscuit with cheese, egg, and sausage and heated it to have with our FIRST garden tomato. Boy, it was very good.
Call from John at 4:00, still at Gold Creek. He will be home at 6:00 p.m. He made it all right but had to deal with the tremendous outflow of traffic from the Seattle area (normal for the weekend) – starting about 3:00 p.m. We had dinner and he fell into bed early. He figures he walked 5-6 miles today {All up hill!} (Nancy here; how can that be? – what goes up must come down, right?)
I alternated time today between handling bookkeeping chores, working on pictures and videos for this blog, filing receipts, and washing clothes. I had a lot of work on correspondence neglected over the past week, and still have a bunch to do. I also spent a lot of time working on a letter of reference for a former student for entrance to a Ph.D. program. Much more to do there too.
Throughout the day, I kept checking for the “newest” perimeter and updates of the fire, but none were forthcoming. I did grab an image of the perimeter (red lines below representing the extent through 8/13), and made a map of the happy scene of the last of the fires in the hills and canyons north of us (yellow dots are the most recent in the past week). John has added a yellow arrow that points to our location.
This image is significant to those who have been following my daily story every 6 hours since the start of the Snag Canyon fire on Aug 2. For sad memories, below is the fire in its initial stages, from a lightning strike NW of us. The following picture was taken by my friend Lynne Harrison, from Ellensburg. She took it from Thomas Road, just south 1/2 mile, and west a mile from our place. She gave me permission to post it.
And, finally, I will insert a copy of a map produced by my friend and former student, Jennifer Hackett, of the progress of the Snag Canyon Fire, with the 2012 fires (Taylor Bridge and Table Mountain) indicated on the current fire map. She has been submitting her work to community members and offering to the local newspaper, Daily Record, at no charge. What a fantastic community service. Thanks, Jennifer!
At the very bottom center, a yellow arrow points to our driveway.
The map above is my favorite of the many she has produced from the data I was using to make my report maps, and displays her abilities to make it more user friendly than the information we were getting on the incident web site. She created fire progress reports daily with evacuation area notices on her maps, many of which I sent to the group of folks on my email fire information interest list. Eventually, 3 of hers were published in our local paper. This year, we have had two major wildfires in our Kittitas Valley, and she was documenting and reporting on both of them. She has a web site with all her work, where from you are able to view and download all of her work (that was updated daily).
Jennifer has it all here.
I awoke earlier than I wished, and couldn’t get back to sleep for thinking and worrying about all the things I had to do today.
Some interesting fire information was posted at 7:38 a.m. today on the inciweb site in the incident overview, as follows:
The Snag Canyon fire has been mapped at 12,667 acres and is 76% contained. Parts of the fire area received over 1 inch of rain from the system that passed through the area earlier this week. However, a warming, drying trend will move in today increasing temperatures and lowering humidity’s and bringing gusty winds. This will increase the chance for spotting and rekindling and smoke may become visible again as the large fuels continue to burn and fine fuels dry out.
A sad note is the higher temperatures predicted to return on Monday (91°).
Jennifer sent me the following this morning, which I had to grab in a lower resolution, so it is not as clear as usual, being snagged from a .pdf (instead of a .jpg). You can reach it tomorrow on her website, but it is not there yet. I hope she will send me the .jpg when she gets home tonight, and we will store it in our blog, so enlarging it will be possible.
The interesting message is our home location on this map. We are in the northernmost curve of Naneum Road between Thomas and Charlton Roads, noted on the map – yellow arrow in the middle green area. [The internal gray shaded areas seem to be tax parcels with homes; see the purple elsewhere.]
John went out early to pick blueberries and made blueberry pancakes for breakfast.
We had a nice midday call from John’s 96 yr. old cousin, Ethel, to catch us up on news – cousin Ken fell while repairing a building and got hurt. (He is about 2 years younger than John. Best wishes to him.) John is out working on various chores (picking plums), cutting trees, propping up limbs on a loaded pear tree) while I finish this blog start. I was able to get his attention so he could join our conversation. She and daughter Pat wanted to ask him what happened to global warming. This morning their temperature was 44 (other relatives in north-central PA claim it almost frosted). They are in Brookville, the “city” where John was born! That was the hospital for Clarion residents back in the 1940s – about the time the shift from home-to-hospital birthing was underway. The distance between the two towns is about 20 miles.
Dog Days of Summer
Sirius is a name we have used on some of our Brittanys since the late 1970s. Interestingly, the first use we made of it was for the grandmother of the Shay (Cedaridge Legacy of Shay), who just died. Her grandmother’s official AKC registered name was Dual Champion/Amateur Field Champion/Canadian Champion Sirius Sashay (and was the first “Shay” in our lines). A Dual Ch has won a title of Field Ch in addition to a Show Ch. The Amateur Ch can only be won with an Amateur handler (not by a professional dog trainer). They have to run only in Open Stakes, but Amateur handlers can run (handle) in both.
One last bit of Brittany good news. This afternoon about 3:00 p.m. we received a phone call from Sonja Willitts, saying her puppy Tug (great, great grandson of Sirius Sashay), had received a 3 point major at a show in Reno today, from the 12-18 month puppy class. That means he won over all the adult Open Dogs, Open Bitches, and Bred-By-Exhibitor dogs in the show. Wow. He is a liver & white Brittany named Tug. More on him with a photo in a future blog. If you have been a long time reader of our blog, you have seen him and his dad (a tri-color Brittany named Kip) in our front yard with Sonja and me earlier this year when they came in their camper and spent the night on their way from S. Lake Tahoe to a lake cabin north of Spokane for a family reunion.
Hope your week was fine.
Nancy and John
Still on the Naneum Fan