Post Fire

We took this picture on the way home from Colorado Springs, a few miles away from Espanola.

 This is taken from just outside Espanola (I wish I'd been able to video it.  A camera couldn't capture the whole fire -- it's wider than the lense).

 We stopped at the turn-off on the way up the hill a few miles out of town.

 We stopped at the airport and took pictures from there.  We love seeing all the helicopters!

 Lots of other people were taking pictures at the airport too.  We had to pick up Dave's car from the airport. He'd taken a rental car to the airport before his trip to New Jersey.  His car had a good bit of ash inside it and the windshield wiper fluid was black.  But at least it was safe.

We went out the night that we got home and took some pictures of the fires glowing around town.  All the hillsides that surround the east and north sides of town glowed like this.  This is by the horse stables not far from our house.

 This is taken from the hill above our house looking towards the north and the roundabout.

 When we got home, our house wasn't as smoky as I'd expected it.  It still smelled a bit like new carpet -- we had just picked up a huge piece of bound carpet for our living room a few days before we evacuated.  The non-smoky smell didn't last long since it's been really hot so we had to open the windows.

The smoke comes and goes.  I'm writing this on July 14th and this morning we woke up to really strong smoke.  Monsoon rains are trying to come.  The last four days it's clouded up in the afternoon, but doesn't produce much rain.  After it rains the smoke rolls in and it smells really stinky!  Hopefully we'll be able to get the smoke smell out of our stuff eventually.