Here's a few pics of our vacation on Lake Chelan. We arrived on 8-12 in the middle of a record heat wave...103 degrees in downtown Chelan...HOT! The first night here we had a beautiful sunset and thunderstorms off in the distance...and the T-storms ignited several forest fires in the area here and one is about 30 miles up Lake Chelan on the north shore that has now grown to 18,000 acres and is completely out of control. They can't fight it apparently as all the state's resources are being applied to fires elsewhere, plus the Lake Chelan fire is in wilderness areas and in too steep of terrain. The fire plume cloud (when visible if the smoke laying in the valley occasionally lifts) looks like a billowing thunderstorm cloud 30,000 feet high in the sky. The smoke smell outside is bad...and everything is covered with a light dusting of ash, and this evening cars passing on the highway are showing smoke in their headlights...so we may be leaving early tomorrow if things continue to degrade. The sun is just a big red ball in the sky through the smoke during the day...and the sunsets through the smoke are very pretty, but the one the first night here before the fires started was just as beautiful...and a lot cleaner smelling! We're still having a nice time and caught more lake trout (mackinaw) today and also pulled the inner tube around behind the boat to try and cool off from the new lower daytime temp of only 90+ degrees. The picture of the boat attached is the "Lady Cat"...a high speed commercial taxi boat that runs the 55 miles up to the remote town of Stehekin at the far end of the lake in about an hour...it sounds like a jet when it thunders by...really something to see. Tomorrow is Kim's birthday, so hopefully things will clear out enough for her to enjoy a beautiful day.

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