Not something you see everyday

nor is it something you would want to. This is the South Fork fire threatening to burn down the entire town. I believe it is something around 66,000 acres at this point. That is all smoke, not clouds, and the sun really is fuchsia like that.

We left at 5 this morning to make it down for Rails and Ales. Sounds great right? Take a train to the mountains, 'sample' all the brews at the festival, take the train back. Well, it should have been great. The train crawled all the way there. We spent 8 hours in a car and 7 hours on a train for about 2 hours of beer festival. This violates our cardinal rule of travel: stay twice as long as you travel. They ran out of beer on the train halfway there - apparently they were unaware of the ALES part of Rails and Ales. Their worst violation however was understanding the impact of people stuck on a train for 7 hours with limited bathrooms. They were overflowing halfway to our destination. I will spare you the details of the return journey.

Our day certainly wasn't as bad as the residents of South Fork, nor all the fire-fighters standing on the edge of town trying to save it. The festival itself was a lot of fun, and some of the beers were outstanding. We will however, NOT be doing it again...ever...