Day 44: Fire, Lookout!

 Ida slept from bedtime to almost dawn. That's a record, I think. Oddly enough, Jen had no trouble with the mattresses in the fire lookout, but I had a hard time being comfortable and getting my temperature right. It made me sleepy all day.

The pre-dawn was beautiful in 360 degrees. When the sun finally came up at 5:07, it was a red egg on the eastern horizon.

 

Our day was beautiful. The fire lookout gets a little airless with the altitude and 3 people breathing inside (plus the occasional propane lantern and citronella candle eating oxygen too). Anyway, I spent most of today outside on the porch surrounding the lookout. At least when I could.

At 7 AM, I spotted a fire.

No, really. There was a plume of smoke.

see it?

I looked up a quick youtube video on how to use the Fire Finder in the middle of the room. The fire was at bearing 146.6 degrees. With that information in mind, I called 9-1-1. It was a bit awkward, but I think I did OK. I gave them the bearing. My estimate was that the fire was about a mile east or southeast of Ardenvoir, Washington. 

9-1-1 informed me that there were lots of reports of lightning-related fires this morning, and they would collate this call with all the others to make sure I wasn't reporting something that had already been reported.

By 11 or so, the smoke stopped. I want to assume that brave firefighters nipped that particular blaze in the bud.

So, not super exciting, but I got to play the part of a hero. Jen and Ida slept through most of it, although I did have to poke Jen and wake her up to show her the smoke.

With no other fires spotted, the rest of the day was left to reading, napping, and caring for Ida.

I kept trying to escape the airless lookout. We could open a window, but...

You could almost tell the time of day from the bugs that were outside. This mountaintop is apparently covered in bugs. Not too many birds or predators... just bugs.

Dawn belonged to the flies-that-look-and-sound-like-bees-but-they're-actually-flies. Early morning brought the winged ants, which had a colony in the shingles of the lookout roof. I had a group of 4 fall on me at once while outside reading.

winged ants, from inside.

There was a large colony of ladybugs that lived near Jen's bed. They got so plentiful in the lookout that you could open the screen door, bang it so the ladybugs fell off, and close it again and (barely) reduce the number of bugs inside.

One of many ladybugs living in LO-516.

By noon, it was mosquitoes, and we had to be careful what we let in the lookout. We had repellent and citronella candles, so we weren't unprepared.

 

 

Early afternoon brought cooling, wind, more thunderstorms, and a break from the bugs. 

Some fun adventures from our day-- Ida outdrank what Jen could produce using her pump, so we had to heat up some refrigerated milk from the cooler. Improvising, I warmed up the cold, cold ziplock of milk in my armpit. Brr. I don't recommend it. Once the milk was finally a drinkable temperature, Ida drank it all. I swear she grew during this trip. She looks less like a new-newborn. Less teeny-tiny. She's still small, but I can see some chub in her face. She has a tiny bit of muscle control. She's growing up. That's kinda sad, but also good for my sleep deprivation.

We kept our phones on airplane mode to save battery most of the time, but we did communicate with the kids. Edgar and Sabrina did OK on their own. Jen ordered Jimmy Johns subs delivery for them tonight. (Apparently they didn't get their order right). 

Betty is having a super fun time with cousins. She keeps sending us weird things like this:

 

I got to use the loo-with-a-view. 

Jen even saw a rainbow when she pooped!

The camping directions strictly say this terlet is only for poop. There's not enough capacity here to pee in the toilet. Despite it being early in the season, the thing was almost full up. I won't share Jen's story without her permission about how she managed to do #1 in the wilderness, but I think she's cool and I admire her adaptability.

We played some guitar together and worked on writing a song.

Jen's phone lit up with a Fire Weather Warning for the entire central washington area. Despite being a little spooked, we decided to stay the course, thinking that if there WERE a fire, we'd be the first to know about it anyways.... right?

We played some Ticket to Ride and eventually settled down for the night. Again, much of the day was spent reading on the wrap-around porch of the fire lookout, caring for Ida, napping, and repeating.

It was a very good day.