July 2021
After D & M and all the kiddos left – B’s friend Chuck and his wife Holly flew in to send Chuck off on a great mountain biking adventure. Sadly I didn’t get any photos of them when they were with us. Chuck was REALLY busy packing and unpacking his mountain bike with all kinds of gear and equipment to ride The Great Western Trail from Big Fork MT down to Idaho for three weeks by himself! He invited B to go but he is not that adventurous (or crazy) to do something like that anymore. They were only there for 3 days and they overlapped Cherie, Eric, Kenzie and Bridger by a night. Bridger really enjoyed the drive up and Eric working at various stops along the way.
B donned his (slightly ridiculous) captain’s hat to teach Bridger, Eric and Kenzie all to surf. They totally rocked it and I was a fantastic flagger! We also puzzled (Cherie, Kenzie, Bridger and I) cooked, laughed so much my cheeks hurt and watched A Quiet Place 1 & 2 plus Black Widow. Every morning Cherie, Bridger and Kenzie would go dive into the lake and dry off laying out on the dock.
There was already smoke from the many California fires coming into MT so the air wasn’t as clear as it usually was but it didn’t put a damper on our days. It was another perfect week at the Lake!
About a week later Jeff & Christina came up. We were able to make it out on the lake the next day and got Jeff up surfing. While we were out there we noticed there was a “small” wildfire across the bay from our house they were fighting by airplanes picking up water in the lake .
That night the wind shifted and our small wildfire turned into a big wildfire and headed down the mountain towards the lake taking out many houses with it. At 3:30 am we got evacuated by the fire department knocking on our door. Jeff and Christina just packed up and left to go home. It was a very quick 36 hour trip for them that sadly ended in a not so fun and quite scary middle of the night exit. The temperature when we loaded up the cars to go was a very warm 86 degrees. We could feel the heat from the fire right across the bay. When we got into town it was only 68 degrees. We parked at the church parking lot with a lot of other members who live in ski doo bay and fell asleep in the van.
