Letterboxing, Fire and Driving Home

After leaving the Homeschool Band Camp, we stopped by the Smokey Bear Historical Park, in Capitan, NM, which just so happened to be celebrating 'Smokey Bear Days'
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But we were there to search for the Smokey Bear Letterbox. We almost gave up due to the fact that the area where the micro-box was hidden had been tidied up, with the rocks mentioned, removed, and the area planted over with wildflowers and other plants.

But with some 'scuffling' through the pine needles and some close-up sleuthing by Jackson we finally found the letterbox, but then we weren't able to re-hide it because one of the park staff came out and asked us to stay out of the area so the flowers and plants wouldn't be damaged. And the inside of the box was soaked due to the sprinklers.
We made a joint decision, based on the much used and exposed original hiding place and direct view towards the park museum doors, to re-hide the box just a little bit southeast of that location, in a less busy location. So, after re-hiding, we headed back on the road towards home. But it was nice to pay our respects to that historic, cute little bear cub on such a special day.

I've wanted to visit the Gran Quivira Ruins for years now and was hoping that we'd make it to the location, just south of Mountainair, by the time they closed at 5pm. But once again, we didn't make it in time and pulled up 3 minutes after 5pm. Darn. We did see the ruins peeking through the trees, which made me yearn to visit even more, but we had to settle for some placard pictures instead.
And with my camera's zoom, I could just make out the ruins up on this ridge, from the road below. One day I will return and finally experience beautiful Gran Quivira.
Just above the town of Mountainair, we could see that the Trigo fires were still burning, but at least, under control now.
A crazy little shop on the outskirts of Mountainair.
Just after we passed Estancia, NM and headed west, we could see the Trigo fires a little more clearer. I was worried that our route home, north on 55 would be closed due to the fire.
And right there at our turn off was the road closed signs along with police cars, fire vehicles, and news crews.
But, thankfully, we were able to head north to our home. Home is such a wonderful word.

Fire Season is Here

Photo taken by me from our home in the East Mountains.(Click for larger view)
For more details on this fire, click our ranch blog:

Laughing Orca Ranch Blog

Burnt House Demolition

In late December the crews came and finally removed all the garbage out of our neighbor's fire damaged house, and salvaged other stuff, like cabinets, lumber, windows, etc. And then they brought in a tractor to tear off the most damaged side of the house and ripped off the roof. Hand crews came in afterwards and removed the outside middle section of the house, but kept the bottom frame and foundation of the burnt house, so that the owners could rebuild onto it. It was interesting to watch from the unique vantage of our home, and I am curious to see what the house will look like when it's finally completed.

Maple 'Fire' Trees

I had always loved fall in our neighborhood, especially the Maple trees in front of our house. They glowed such a striking gorgeous red color. But this year the joy for my Maples was dampened. The fiery red leaves reminded me too much of the fire on October 17th.

Finally House Fire Clean-up

Finally, in early December, the insurance chaos was worked through, and the family was able to get someone to tear off the roof and top half of their house, so they could re-build eventually a 2 story home.
Not long after that, we finally gained some interest in our house and an offer was placed by an all female couple with 2 young sons. Actually my sons had known the boys when they attended 1st grade in our neighborhood public school. It was still a little bit odd, mostly because the women tried to keep their 'secret' private, when it was obvious, and also because their older son told us that he had two Mommies that shared the same bed.
It didn't bother me at all that they were lesbians. Hey! I was just happy that someone was going to buy our house, so we could move back to our beloved New Mexico.
This couple did buy our house and moved in during early January. I'd sure love to be a fly in our old neighborhood, though. I'm sure my old neighbors are buzzing about their new neighbors. heheh!

After the Fire

The 2-story green house across the street is ours....and yes, that's a For Sale out front. We had listed our house for sale in August, and then the hurricanes hit the Gulf and affected the gas prices and the economy, so we had trouble selling our house. As anyone can imagine, having a bunrt down house sitting across the street with views from almost all windows looking at the sinister looking shell of a house, was not a huge help in getting our house sold any quicker.

The family had went to live a townhouse in the same town, but the house was left in that condition for 2 months before any clean up was done. So, all the soot, burned pieces of paper and trash blew into ours and our neighbor's yards. And the smell of the garbage left in their fridge, in their kitchen and in the garbage cans was sometimes unbearable.

The house was also very spooky at night, and I felt the need to keep the curtains closed at night and avoided looking out my front windows almost always.

House Fire~Oct 17, 2005

What an eerie feeling to be awakened at 3 in the morning to a huge "Boom!" and watch your walls flickering bright red.
That's what happened to us on the morning of John's birthday. It was surreal to look out our bedroom window and watch our neighbor's house, that had been there for the 7 years we'd lived in the neighborhood, covered in flames and burning.
It got very scary when the fire department still had not arrived, even after we and several other neighbors had called again and again. The fire station was only 4 minutes from our house and it took almost 10 minutes from their trucks to arrive. In that time, the fire started to slither out toward another neighbor's house, Jackson & Jeremiah best buddy's house, Justin. The boys were so worried about their friend and we all went outside to show our support for our neighbors while the fire trucks took more than 5 hours to put out the blaze and recurring flare-ups.

Justin's house only suffered some minor fire/smoke damage and melted vinyl siding. The house across the street, though was destroyed. The fire had burned down the garage and fireplace(what an awesome sight watching a brick chimney fall to the ground!) and moved across the house's attic. The burning attic caused everything to fall from the attic into the house, so between the fall out from the burnt attic and the smoke damage and fire damage to the living areas and kitchen, the house was a complete loss.
Also, their two cars parked in front of the garage were melted, burned and totalled. Even the glass that exploded into the seats melted into the vinyl and rubber.
The neighbors escaped unharmed, but one of their puppies that was kept in the garage, in a crate, sadly, was killed.
At one point, an opening in the attic, glowed red with fire and reminded me of an angry dragon's eye. It was very spooky.