Wood Hollow Fire

On June 23, 2012, Sanpete County experienced one of the state's biggest fires of the summer.  It burned for 10 days, 52 homes were burned, 160 structures total.  One man died trying to escape in his car.  It burned 75 square miles and cost the state $4 million to put out.  Kelly, Granny, and I spent a couple of days watching.  Curt and I also went up a couple of different times to watch them fight the fire.

The entire town of Fairview had to be evacuated.  Highway 89 was closed several times.

This was the Seely Fire burning on the east side of the valley.  There was also a fire near Oak City (west of Nephi) so we had three sides of our valley on fire at one time.

How can something so awful create such a beautiful sunset.

This fire fighting helicopter was actually in Mesquite but we had to take a picture.  It was huge!  On the tank it said it could hold up to 2,400 gallons of water.

This one in Mesquite was even bigger than the orange one.

Between Moroni and Ftn. Green.

This video shows the fires (smoke) on all three sides of our valley.  It starts looking west by the airport.

 



A command post was set up in Moroni at the middle school.  All the news stations were there.

 Following Fox 13 into Mt. Pleasant.

Let's hope we don't have another fire like that one.

Oceanside Beach

In July we were able to go to Cashelle and A.J.'s house for a week.  One of the days there we went to Oceanside and played at the beach.  We had so much fun.



Cashelle was digging a big hole in the sand.  I'm not sure why--maybe to put Spencer in?  JK  Cody had fun getting buried in the sand.

 We took a stroll out on the pier.  Curt got his feet and legs so sunburned they peeled twice!

 Maddie is becoming a pretty good boogie boarder.

 I tried to take a panaromaic view with my new little camera we had to buy because I left mine home, duh.  But, it looks like I cut off the end.  Cashelle's friend, Renee (I don't know if that's spelled right) met us there with her kids.

 Off the shore the coast guard or army or something was practicing.

Miscellaneous fun in California!

OK, I already posted our fun at SeaWorld, but I need to finish up our California trip.  One afternoon we played basketball,

 took the kids to the park,

And we went to Temucula to pick our own blueberries that Cashelle put in pancakes the next day.

 Yum!

 One day we drove up to the Palomar observatory.  It was amazing.  The observatory is home to five telescopes that are nightly used for a wide variety of astronomical research programs. The research is conducted by Caltech's faculty, post-doctoral fellows and students, and by researchers at Caltech's collaborating institutions.

The kids found a lizard one day on the house.  The kids were fascinated by it.

 On one of our trips we stopped at McDonald's.  Look at Spencer--he had a fun time.  He's so cute.