When you get bad news . . .

We are always behind in our travel blog posts, but now we are further behind than usual. Maybe we will go back to finish up those posts about our last days in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, and our great trip along the Gulf Coast. But for now we thought it was better to explain our week-long absence from wandering His wonders. You see, we got some bad news. 

We got a phone call from Mark's brother that a wild fire had started in the panhandle of Oklahoma. They are in a drought, and were experiencing 40 mile-per-hour winds. When he heard about the fire, he went to check the cattle that he had in the area. He also realized that the fire was getting close to Denisa's Mother's house. But he didn't have her cell phone number to call and warn her about the fire. So he called Mark's Mother--who called Denisa's Mother. It was afternoon, prime nap time for a 91-year-old, and the phone call roused her. When she looked out her front window she could see the billowing smoke. With a second look, she could see the flames in her pasture just north of her house--pushed by those 40 mile-per-hour winds straight towards her. So she grabbed her cane, her purse, and her rings, and backed her car out of the garage. It was only minutes later that the flames engulfed her house.

Many of the roads were closed, but a man she didn't know was stopped at the intersection a mile and a half away. We still don't know who it was, but we'll just call him her "guardian angel." He offered to drive his pickup ahead of her car, leading her out of the path of the fire. He led her all the way to Mark's Mother's house, 20 miles away.

When we got the phone call about the fire, we knew that Denisa's Mother was safe. But we didn't know if perhaps the volunteer fire departments in the area would be able to guide the fire away from the house. It was moving too quickly, and the house was quickly burned into a pile of rubble.

We were in a campground in east Texas when we got the news of the fire, and then the news that the house was gone. So we packed up the motor home and headed to the Oklahoma panhandle. We have several rules about motor home travel. 1) We only travel around 100 miles a day. 2) We never travel through large cities. 3) We never travel on really windy days. We broke all three of those rules in order to get to our destination as quickly as possible. It was 523 miles going straight through Dallas and Oklahoma City.

The traffic and the construction made for stop-and-go traffic on many occasions through-out our journey.

Besides all that, the wind was blowing straight out of the north at 30-40 miles per hour. We had to break all three of our traveling rules that day! Mark had to work hard to keep the motor home in its lane every mile of the very long drive. It was the worst travel day since we started this full-time adventure. As we got closer to our destination, the sky was brown and the sun was an eerie color from all the dirt and smoke in the air.

We arrived about 24 hours after the fire burned its way through a life-time of accumulation. It didn't burn the memories--just the "stuff." We are now in the middle of sorting through the rubble and making plans for the future. Perhaps we'll have a chance to fill in those travel blogs that we have experienced but haven't written about yet. In the meantime, we are taking care of life--after you get bad news.