Sunrise over the Rubicon Trail, the most famous 4 Wheel Drive trail in the world.

This is "the bowl" of the Rubicon Trail. This area was once covered by a glacier and there are many really big boulders that were moved by the receeding ice.

Most Jeepers are happy to pose for the camera, they're pretty proud of the modifacations they've done to their Jeeps. Here Lea was also happy to pose in front of the camera. The pink slips she's holding are what we use to identify each vehicle we shoot. The slip has a photo number on it that corresponds to the frame and roll number of our film. After a picture is taken the driver is given a slip. They return the slip to us on Sunday, at trails end, so they can purchase their 16x20 photograph. Yep.....we don't get much (if any) sleep between Wednesday morning and Sunday night.

Lea brought along here pocket digital camera to shoot these pictures for me to put up on my blog. Here she caught a part of me while I was shooting.

Just taking a brief rest.

Some Jeep drivers know just how far they can go before rolling over. This year only one did roll over but not on a day when Lea had her digital camera.

The trail is slow moving since there's always someone in front that's going to get stuck or break down. No one seems to mind too much, they just get out, have a few beers and often make a few needed repairs on their Jeep while they wait.

We're done shooting on the trail now for the summer and we have less than a month before heading back to Arizona. Hopefully we'll be able to get in some camping and a few hikes. We took this year off from fly fishing, no real reason. We don't keep fish anymore and there's some beautiful areas of wild trout (catch and release only, using barbless hooks), I'm sure we'll be back into it next year.

I plan on being better at keeping this blog updated for the next few weeks :)

Clear Skies

Looking straight up from our campsite, this is about the same view as one of the Monday photos I showed in this blog of the smoke from the fire. I like this one much better than the previous.
During the worst of the fire there was lots of fine ash and chunks of burnt bark raining down on us. Most of the chunks were about the size of a quarter and smaller but then there was this one I'm holding shown below.


As of today, the fire is 70% contained, the highways are open and those who were evacuated, or left voluntarily, are returning. The local community and most merchants are pitching in to help those who lost their homes. The Red Cross is here, as well as many temporary donation facilities, to aid those in need. We went to the grocery store yesterday and instead of being asked how we were ...... we were asked if we were safe. Fortunatly we could reply ..... "yes". I know this community very well and they will band together and help one another to get through this. We have not seen our friends yet who lost their home.

I now look forward to getting back to normal and returning to the silly posts this summer blog should be about.

Tuesday June 26 Fire Jumps Hwy 89

Yesterday afternoon the Angora fire jumped Hwy 89 near Camp Richardson, this is the plume of smoke as seen from the intersection of Hwy 50 and Hwy 89. I was down at the intersection on my bike and watched as Hwy 89 was closed and around 20 fire trucks moved from one location of the fire to another.



This was the view yesterday around 3pm from our campground entrance off of Hwy 50 looking north towards Raleys Supermarket (Ellie knows how close that is). Currently the fire is staying north of us but heavy winds are predicted for this afternoon so we're keeping the car packed although I feel optimistic that we are over the worst of the scares ...... I even saw some stars last night!

Tahoe Fire Area Map

The above image was posted on CNN this morning and shows the current fire area. I placed an "X" with a circle around it showing our location. The smoke is heavy here and it smells really bad. We are very sad for the people who have lost their homes, these were not summer homes, these were mostly moderately priced homes (for the area) belonging to locals. We have friends who have lost their home. The current report is that the fire is 40% contained but the race is on to get further containment before the winds return tomorrow.

Tahoe Fire

A fire started within a few miles of our campground yesterday afternoon around 2:15. This is what we saw looking straight up into the sky at about 2:30

About an hour later, this is what the sky looked like.

There was a lot of air tankers and helicopters. I shot this one around 4:30.



Around 5pm we were notified to be prepared to evacuate. We loaded up our car with important items, tuned into the local radio channel and waited. People with homes were keeping their wooden roofs watered down and some people in the campground left. This morning the winds are calm and we're optimistic that we won't have to leave. Many homes have been lost and the mood around here is pretty gloomy. All incoming roads into Lake Tahoe are closed and everyone is advised to stay home and indoors since the smoke is pretty nasty. Lots of ashes and even some chunks of burned wood are coming down so it's really kinda messy. The good news is that the last report we heard said that the fire is close to 10% contained. I'll post again tomorrow and hopefully have some good news.

Dogs On The Beach

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Our dogs Andi, Millie and Barb and Ginny's dogs Dolly and Samson on the beach at Lake Tahoe this morning. This is about an hour timelapsed into just 20 seconds. Click the thumbnail to play video and then give it some time to load

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