Bright Sunny Skies

Sweet relief! We've had some rain the past few days, not much mind you, but just enough to calm the fires and smoke. Enough so that I can actually see across the valley and breath relatively fresh air. Over the weekend we had ash falling from the skies and covering everything, visibility was less than a mile and by 5:00 p.m. the skies were getting dark as if the sun were setting! So, to say the least, we are thrilled to see the sun and clouds again, if only for a short while.

Last night we could even see the stars and the quarter moon. The temperatures have even given way to cooler air, and our highs have been in the 70's for the past few days.

Laura's mom is letting me borrow her nice digital camera until Christmas, so I have had the pleasure of taking lots of pictures with it! Monday, after the rains ended I was on my way to run and play ulitmate frisbee and I stopped on my way down the mountain to get a picture of the fire across the valley that made such a mess. These are the exact same picture, just cropped to focus on the burnt areas of the mountains. If you click on the second picture you can see in much greater detail exactly what was burning. This is about 10 miles from where I was, you can see it was a doozie! Keep in mind, this was actually a rather small fire for the area, but a few homes were lost - you can see it was close to the valley in several areas.

I'm looking forward to having a smokeless day and some running to boot! I've lost about 10 pounds since I started running again, and I am noticing it when I play frisbee as well - I move just a little quicker and jump a little higher. Until again

-=Nolan=-