Fire!

Driving to dad's yesterday was an interesting journey. When I was passing Huntley, my brother called and told me there was a fairly large fire burning in the hills outside of Columbus. As I came over the Yellowstone Bridge on I-90, I could see that the city was really hazy and figured it might be smoke from the fire. I was right. Not only could you smell it, you could taste it INSIDE Costco! It was too smokey to take pictures in Billings, so I finished my shopping and headed west on I-90 toward Columbus. I stopped (illegally I suppose) on the freeway and took a couple of pictures with my cell phone, but didn't want to take a chance and get the digital out of the trunk (there were lots of police on the road). When I got to the offramp in Columbus I pulled over (in a safe place) got the digital and took this picture.


The picture above was taken in downtown Columbus at around 6:30 pm July 10. It wasn't very smokey in town, but it was dark and forbidding and I was glad to get the pictures taken and head out of town. There are a lot of people living in the fire danger area so please send thoughts and prayers their direction. The Billings Gazette had some horrific pictures in their online edition if you haven't seen them already.


Once I got to the Columbus-Absarokee road, there was a whole lot of traffic, in addition to the road construction. I didn't stop to take any pictures because I felt it would be dangerous to do so. After I got to Absarokee I spent time doting on my dad and then we watched the movie "Murphy's Romance". It's an older movie, but a classic in my opinion. During the movie, we heard a huge clap of thunder and I looked outside. Much to my surprise there was a double rainbow on the horizon. I took a picture, and although it was pretty dark outside, I still think it is neat.