Sunday July 5, 2015 A Wild Day

We got up and completed our regular routine. Then we went to the Brig for work.  The kids and Kristi went to the Junior Ranger program at Whitetail campground. The Brig had a lot of visitors this morning, lots of campers stop by on their way out of the park.  Before you know it, we had someone in the Brig, who wanted to use the phone because his boat was capsized.    He said his boat was across the lake, I had a paper from Bayview and remembered reading about the Citizen Rescue squad, so we got that.  I decided to use the radio to talk to the Ranger and she was glad to know the person's location and said she would be down right away to pick him up and give him assistance.  Great!

We had lots of visitors and before long, Kristi and the kids were back and I showed them around the museum and helped the kids earn their Jr Ranger button from the Brig.  Steve awarded them their Jr. Ranger Buttons and I took their picture!

Before long we had more excitement on the radio.  A fire was reported on Cape Horn, north of Bayview.  The radio just never stopped much.  While Steve was at the RV, Kristi and I got a phone call from Kootenai County that the town of Bayview was being evacuated.  This got us pretty excited, especially me.  I am scared of fire.  We made a list of preparations we might need in order to evacuate and Steve and Kristi started them.  We especially thought the awning should be down, the jacks up and the slides put away.  

We started monitoring the radio closely.  The first thing we heard was camp hosts being to put into places to block the road and close access to some of the day areas.  The day areas were closed first.  We received notice to close the Brig Museum as soon as the visitors left.  We got the Brig closed and continued to stay by the radio.  Then ashes were seen on Beaver Bay, so Whitetail and Snowberry Campgrounds were evacuated.

 We heard aircraft, including a helicoptor with a bucket, fighting the fire. We closed the Brig Museum to visitors early - probably about 1:30 or 2:00 PM.  We stayed there to keep informed by the radio. We finally left the Brig about 5 PM and had our supper.  Steve had a tummy ache.  

We decided he needed ice cream, so went to Athol!  We watched the smoke and also when we returned we drove around and took a few pictures of the fires. 

While we were in Athol, The Main Park Ranger had brought hand-held radios for us to have for our safety.  We did hear that a camp will be set up for firefighters here in the park starting at 0600 on Tuesday.

Finally we called it a night about 11:30 PM.

More tomorrow.  We are not sure whether the Brig will be open or not tomorrow.