CNN hits home

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Well we were feeling quite recharged and ready to head out of the wilderness of Yellowstone and make our push towards California. We left Yellowstone around 830 in the morning and figured we would head down to Route 80 in Nevada. The drive was long, flat, and boaring. Meg and I played the "In my suitcase I am going to bring" game. She won. We figured we would drive as far as we could get that day (Reno, NV) and have a shorter drive to San Francisco. All was going well until we hit Route 80n just outside Elk NV. The electric sign read ROUTE 80 CLOSED FIND OTHER ROUTE. Foe some reason I thought they were kidding. Not to long after the police and thruway authorities blocked the highway and forced everyone to pull of or turn around. All we could see in the distance is massive amounts of smoke. We pulled off and got out of the car and walked up to the other stranded motorists to watch the fire burning a mile away. The trooper told us that the fire had pushed close to the highway and it would be closed for 2 or 3 hours. We had hit our first "roadblock" in the honeymoon. We spent the next 2 hours talking with a family from Davis, CA. I offered Eric (our new forest fire party friend) a taste of upstate NY ADK IPA and we rapped about of lives back home on the side of a highway. Finally after a 2 hour way the state trooper told us he would take a "test group "through the open part of the highway. Shocking...I volunteered right away. We quickly said goodbye to our friends and headed into them. As we were passing the burning areas which were about 5 feet from the highway it was shocking how much was on fire. We drove through the night in order to get to Reno and pass right out. We saw about a dozen other fires throughout the state of Nevada burning into the night. One fire was spreading into the town of Winnemucca and all of the sudden I began to realize how life changing these things can be. I have always seen these things on the national news, but this time I was watching the fire spread closer to all of these homes as I drove by. It was one of the most amazing and saddest things I have ever seen. We finally arrived in Reno at 2 am fell asleep within minutes.

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-Krupas

The trooper told us that the fire had pushed close to the highway and it would be closed for 2 or 3 hours.