No Rooms Available

Yesterday, and every day until Sunday night, has left us with no rooms available to sell to walk-in traffic. We are booked 100% for each day. It was sad for us to watch the number of folks - mostly older and many foreigners who could barely speak the language - being turned away as a result of no rooms being available anywhere in town. There are several events that have caused this problem - a Masons convention, high school rodeo competition and an Art Fair. People that have not made reservations assumed that, because the kids are all back to school, rooms would be easy to find. It's a hard lesson to learn that no matter where or when you travel, you need to know you have a guaranteed place to sleep each night. Sigh!

The fire has been spreading steadily, but the firefighters have successfully kept it away from town. There were a couple of good shots of the fire that appeared in the local paper which are reproduced below. The first one is a shot taken from a helicopter yesterday:

Our location in that photo is just off the picture below the center portion of the photo. Below is a shot of the backyard of the homeowner where the fire started - you can see where the burn area begins at the back of his property:

The fire spread so fast that they couldn't stop the spread. It burned right up the hill and into the canyon.

This final shot is of a helicopter fighting the fire. They worked feverishly yesterday to protect the communications equipment on the top of the mountain:

It's hard to believe that the little bit of water that the helicopter is carrying can have any impact on the fire. Hopefully, we'll get some good news soon on the containment which still sits at 10%.

Our plans to go to Cody this weekend have been cancelled as we thought that, since we are returning again next year, we can schedule the trip during a better part of the summer season - in June or July. We are now planning to take a drive on a road south of town that we have heard about and have not seen, and also, maybe take a trip into town to the Art Fair. Until tomorrow...