1. Today started with a mixture of good news and difficult news and as the day progressed, the news became darker and more dangerous.
This morning, Ed called me with good news. He had just seen his urologist and the blood work he had done last week looked good. That was a relief.
Soon thereafter, Carol and I heard from Christy that the pain in her leg was such that she had to pull out of our planned sibling outing to Spokane. No way were Carol and I going to go without Christy and so we canceled today's trip and we'll see if we can work out another date in June.
(It turned out to be fortuitous that we didn't go to Spokane. A very serious fire broke out in the Beacon Hill area. We had planned a visit to Hilyard, just west of the fire, and really had no business going on a pleasure trip to that vicinity. If you haven't seen the news or heard about it, it's a devastating fire.)
I knew Ed was most likely free after his doctor appointment so I called him and he agreed that it would be fun to go spin some reels at the CdA Casino.
And it was.
Neither of us had much luck, but we had fun playing machines, had great conversation going down and returning home, and enjoyed a delicious lunch at the Red Tail Bar and Grill.
2. Toward the end of our stay, we both received alerts on our cell phones about the Beacon Hill fire just east of Spokane.
Strong winds blew all the way on our return trip. Both of us knew that a red flag warning about fires had been issued in the morning, but let me tell you what we didn't know.
After dropping Ed off around 3 p.m., I pulled into the driveway and pushed the garage door opener and nothing happened. At first, I thought the garage opener needed fresh batteries, but once I walked in the house, I realized we had no power.
A message arrived on my phone from Avista telling me power would be restored around five.
Then, I found out from Stu that a fire had broken out nearby, a few miles east of Kellogg, south of the freeway, in the hilly region between Elizabeth Park and Big Creek.
3. I learned the power outage was a safety measure carried out by Avista.
I learned the sheriff ordered residents in Elizabeth Park and Big Creek to evacuate. The fire was travelling east and the sheriff put Osburn under a Be Ready order.
The fire grew to over two hundred acres.
I kept tabs on it via the Watch Duty app.
Debbie called me, knowing that the power was out and that a fire was burning east of Kellogg.
We talked.
The winds subsided.
The temperature got cooler, coming down from the mid-70s to the 50s, maybe even the 40s.
Avista determined that it was safe enough to end the blackout,
Avista turned our power back on at 11.
As I write this blog post on Wednesday morning at about 10:30, the fire has grown some and it's now 10 percent contained after hours of being 0 percent contained.
There's not much wind this morning and it's cooler out today that it was yesterday.
I'll be back this evening or tomorrow on this blog with an update.
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