For vacation last week, I took the family to Red River, NM. As part of the trip, we intended to see my brother and his family in northwest Colorado Springs. I had been to his home once, and the rest of the family had never been there.
There was, of course, a wildfire burning in the Pike National Forest. This was the Waldo Canyon Fire, not yet on the National news. We learned about the fire while on the road Sunday morning as we passed through Holbrook, Arizona, and all seemed like it would behave and burn away from the city.
On Monday evening, I spoke with my brother and it still seemed conditions were going to keep the fire moving North and West. We decided to proceed.
Here are some photos from Tuesday morning on northbound I-25 south of Colorado Springs.
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We arrived just after noon and had a quick lunch. The two families just hung out, my kids with his daughter, my wife with his wife, and me with my brother.
All seemed well, and we made plans for various activities that evening. After dinner, my daughters wanted to do some extreme yoga with their aunt, and the rest of us were going to play glow in the dark mini golf.
That isn’t what happened. Instead, the kids looked out the window and saw this.
I went outside and snapped a picture of this, a pretty cool photo, but pretty darn spooky in person.
At that time, I told my brother we should not go out because we might not be able to get back. It turns out, we didn’t even have that long. The neighbors could see flames on the nearby ridge, and news came quickly that the entire area was being evacuated.
I had put my family’s bags back into the car right after dinner (before the evacuation became ovbious) to ensure that we wouldn’t be getting in the way. Everyone helped pack precious photos and other valuables into their two cars.
We had planned to eat a pie after dinner. Just before everyone evacuated the house, we all grabbed a fork and took a simultaneous bite of our evacuation pie.
Here’s what the smoke-filled neighborhood looked like just before we left. The smoke doesn’t show up well in the pictures, but it was everywhere and it was enough to prevent us from using the AC in the car until we got out of the cloud.
While I have a sister in Denver, 95% or more of the evacuation traffic was trying to go north, so we decided to just get out of the way and headed back to New Mexico.
My brother and his family were out of their house for 4 days, but returned to find everything in good condition except the inside of the refrigerator. The power had been out for 4 days with record high temps.
While everyone would have preferred to visit for more than six hours, we all have a story to tell.