Friday night in King Hill

I haven't posted in six months!  Where does the time go?  Right now the time just seems to crawl.  For a crafter, this is the Dead Zone.  The time after Christmas and before summer when nobody has money, or needs to buy anything because they too, are just trying to get through winter.
I guess on the up side, is it means there is time to go for drives.  Just 15 miles from our home starts a sagebrush wilderness with large ranches scattered about.  There is a loop we drive on where hundreds of deer and antelope play and winter forage.

This big buck watched us the whole time we sat in the car watching the herd.  That is a wheel line behind them so they're in someone's farm grazing. There were at least 150 head in this bunch.

We also walked by one of our favorite spots, a railroad trestle near King Hill.  This photo is looking up at it and on an angle (learned that from daughter August)... it looks like art doesn't it?

We had Bear and our new puppy Lilli.  Spending a lot of time with your pups is a good way to pass the time too during the Dead Zone.  Lilli the Shar-Pei has been with us only about 60 days now and we've already got a million memories with her.  She is a total character.  She talks when you make a funny face and say "What"?  She'll do a Sit and a Down on command if you're bribing her with dried blueberries.  She has brought our elderly Bear doggy back to his puppy-hood again with rambunctious bouts of play.  We love her and she loves us unconditionally.  She doesn't care if Mom isn't selling anything :)  unless the kibbles run low of course!
On our walk by the river and railroad tracks, we ran across what we're pretty sure are wolf prints.  They were HUGE!  My tennis shoe is about 4" across, so that gives you an idea of the size.  The long nails seemed to say wild animal rather than large dog as well.  There have been wolves sighted in nearby areas, so it's not that big a reach to cry wolf.  With all the livestock and the wild game, there is plenty to eat too.

Hagerman Fire

Over the weekend we had an enormous fire in our area, burning 215,000 acres in a 24 hour period!  I believe the acreage total is up over 300,000 now but the fire in our area is done.... since it ran out of anything to burn.
I woke up at 5 am on Sunday morning and was opening some windows to let fresh air in when I noticed the whole horizon to the west was glowing red.  Our town has a mighty river, the Snake between it and a high desert plateau which was currently on fire.
My husband and I jumped in the car and drove up top of our valley to see what we could see.  To the south of us, the fire was so big that even though it was miles away we could see flames leaping.  It was pitch dark so I couldn't
 really get any good photos there.

We drove over to the Bliss Grade overlook and got some amazing photos, as we watched the fire advance for about an hour.   The first photo shows the reflection of my car's windshield.

The next photo shows the fire advancing behind a cone shaped hill with the fire reflected in the river below.  It was the eeriest feeling, as there was a ribbon of fire miles long, and way downriver in the dark, we could see only a couple of different spots where there was flashing red emergency vehicle lights.  We thought "are we the only ones that know the whole place is on fire?"... we didn't know that everybody was fighting a fire south of here till later in the day.

As the dawn advanced, you can see where the fire has burned over the cone, the smoke is starting to come up that engulfed the Magic Valley all day.  The firefighters protected structures up on the desert, and I could hear helicopters and bombers that were getting water out of the river to drop on the fire all day.   Around 5 pm, the wind came up around 25-30 mph and the fire was at the river's edge.  It jumped the river in 3 places, but fire departments from the whole valley were waiting and got it put out immediately.  After that, the smoke just cleared out... the fire had run out of fuel at last.  Whew!