Fire at Baumgartner!!!

We decided to go camping to our favorite camp spot the last weekend before school started up again. We invited our good friends, Krystalyn and Neil Bird and their little 3 year old, Tyler.

Bird's couldn't get up there until Friday afternoon so Justin and I got to spend most of the day together just chilling out and really doing nothing...it felt great! Friday afternoon rolled around and they showed up. The weather was beautiful outside, not a cloud in sight and a perfect 90 degrees for awesome swimming!

That night as we sat around the campfire talking there was a sudden flash of lightening. As we looked up we realized that even though there had been no wind, the sky was now covered with dark clouds. We hurried to get everything under the tarp before it started raining.

Just as we were finishing there was another bright bolt of lightening with an incredibly loud thunder accompanying it simultaneously. The rain POURED for about 5 minutes and then stopped just as abrubtly as it began.

As we walked out from the tarp and looked up at the sky, we could see the millions of stars again and not a cloud in sight. Our eyes traveled from the sky down the mountain where we noticed that the whole hillside was on fire!

The lightening had struck a tree on the mountain very near our campsite. We were evacuated along with all the other families that were camping near us. This basically involved throwing all of our belongings into the back of both rigs and hoping that nothing got ruined. It was about 1 in the morning at this point.

We drove across the river and down the road about a mile or two, figuring that if the fire spread that far we would be notified again.

Because it was so late we didn't really want to set up camp again. So we just cleared out the back of our Land Cruiser and the back of their Suburban and each slept in the back of our respective rigs. I highly discourage anyone from doing this unless absolutely necessary...especially when you are pregnant!

I hurt SOOOO bad the next morning. There just wasn't quite enough room to spread out lengthwise or width wise. It was super uncomfortable. Our poor dogs had to try to figure out how to sleep on the front seats with all our crap. I will say, though, that I am happy that we had the rig and we didn't have to try to sleep in bucket seats in a car! That would have been way worse!

The next morning, we went back to the campsite. They had completely evacuated from our loop clear to the swimming hole. They had about 3 spaces left in the first loop that was not evacuated. We set up camp in one of those for the remaining of our little trip.

Unfortunately, although we got to stay there, the hot tub that makes the campsite so wonderful was closed because the fire was directly above it and they were still putting it out for the next 24 hours. Also, we couldn't get to the swimming hole from the camp side of the river. We had to drive clear out and around to the other side for the same reason.

Oh well, it is always an adventure and as long as everyone is safe it just makes it that much more enjoyable!