A while back when I was looking at the time between locations and choosing my general route, GoogleMaps informed me that a wildfire was going to alter my route. It was then that I realized there is a layer you can add to your map that points out wildfires in the area, something I have never had to worry about before.
Days ago, on my drive from Kalispell to Spokane Valley, I started seeing evidence of a fire. Though I did not see flames or even smoke, the black burnt ground remained. Instead of yellow fields, they were black. At first, I thought it was a new landscape I had not seen yet, black exposed rock. The black would come and go, mixed in with yellow scrubgrass, so the lack of consistency was not what I expected. It wasn't until seeing signs for "fire traffic", and later wafts of smoke smell permeating my car, that I knew for sure. Only days prior to my drive, this route was surrounded in flames. Ever since then, I have become more aware of so many signs regarding fire safety. The Elmo fire was finally contained a month after it started, burning over twenty thousand acres of land.
The Elmo fire is just one of countless fires all over the US but mostly western Montana and all of Idaho. Now that I am here, this makes more sense to me. This place is a powder keg. The dry drought-like terrain needs so very little to spread a flame. In fact, the other day when I was driving from Coeur D'Alene back to my hotel in Spokane Valley, I got stopped for a 1/2 hour later being told it was because of a vehicle fire. I could see the smoke billowing into the air from maybe 2 miles east but had to sit in the standstill until it was contained. When I did pass, the car was demolished by the fire and the hillside surrounding it also showed signs of fire damage. I don't know what started what, but I do know in all of my years living in the eastern half of the US, I never once saw a car on the side of the road and worried about the hillside grass surrounding it.
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