A Plume of Smoke....

Went over the pass to Durango with Daughter #2 and friends to see the new Disney/Pixar movie Brave, click here for my review on my other blog and for awhile wondered if we would be getting home, for the plume of smoke we were driving towards, that for a while covered the sun and turned it blood red.
See the road, it curves around that front hill, right where the fire seems to be and right where we need to get through. If the road is closed, we have to go back and make a circle the other direction literally into New Mexico and back around. I was debating that or going back to Durango and going to the nearest grocery store, getting five toothbrushes and checking into a motel, when the radio finally  announced the fire was in the back end of Weber Canyon, a side canyon, on the backside of the cow town of Mancos and very near Mesa Verde National Park, but a safe distance from the highway and if the winds cooperated, I should be able to drive by it.

Reaching the top of Mancos Hill, the wind was blowing the plume away from the highway and I wasn't the only vehicle which pulled over to marvel at it.

Driving into Mancos, I had almost circled it entirely and all the area firefighters, both agencies, like the Forest Service or BLM and local volunteer trucks where approaching it from all sides.....

This vehicle that I pulled over for was headed towards Cherry Creek, the next valley over towards Durango, and where the wind was blowing towards....

I just happened to have my high powered camera in the car and from a distance got this picture of the main road block to the Weber Canyon enterence. Two women in flat bed trucks had just pulled up and appeared to be pleading with the officers to let them through to their ranches and animals...

Coming past Mancos on the highway, I cringed at the track of the smoke which seems to run the back half of Weber canyon and up the side of Manafee Mountain....

A bomber plane came down low and dumped fire retardant on the canyon, a smaller spotter plane talking him in...

There happened to be road construction right after as the highway approached the Mesa Verde National Park entrance and a five minute wait on the road allowed me to stand on the highway and get a picture of the backside of it...

And now back home, the sunsetting, we can see it blaze up and spread, through oak brush on top of the pass, damaged from a late frost and dry from no rain for weeks...

We are twenty plus miles away from Weber Canyon, but the flames can be seen just fine from our bedroom window, right now it is going the other way, which is not good, since Mancos Pass is covered in oak brush with hardly any fire break and there are several socked in homes up there. See what the morning brings.