Peewink, et al...

After posting my blog last night, I spent 20 minutes hitting the Re-Dial button on the telephone, trying to get hold of Grandma Anne. All circuits were busy - well, of course! They were having a fire! I did get her on the phone, she was evacuated; but she never made it down to Boulder. When I was speaking to her, she could see the flames from the fire on the horizon. As she lives off Sugarloaf Road, she drove east on it to arrive at Boulder Canyon to come to Boulder; Boulder Canyon Drive was closed due to the fire. So she had to turn around and drive back by the fire itself to get to the Peak to Peak Highway, and decided to stop in at the Nederland Community Center before heading north to Lyons to make a huge 25 mile loop to get back to Boulder. When she arrived at the NCC, she was told that the evacuation order had been lifted and she could go back home. At that time, they already had the fire 60% contained, and had plenty of man-power and equipment on hand. The fire started on a power pole - the power had been off due to the FourMile Canyon fire, and when the power was turned back on, something shorted, and the fire began. So the Peewink fire is now totally contained, as are the Reservoir Road fire, and the FourMile Canyon fire. Some folks are just being allowed to go up and visit their homes today... and we have another wildfire, but this one is on the western slope of the Rocky Mountain National Park, so this community doesn't have to sweat it.
This morning, when I got up to run around to all my houses, the atmosphere of the entire town smelled like sour smoke, as if one had just dumped a bucket of water on a campfire. Yuck. The weather folks said it would be cool with a possible drizzle this morning, warming up to 83 with sunny skies. It was overcast, cool, grey, and misty until 2 p.m.; and our high was 67. It was a nice treat - but folks were incredibly bundled up for this first taste of fall. I was running around in a T-shirt and shorts, as usual; and garnered my usual share of double-takes. All the kits and all the dogs are fine and dandy. But I'm a bit tired. About to fix my supper and then read myself to sleep....