I just wrapped up an extended weekend trip back home in southeast Michigan.
I always love having an excuse to visit Michigan, and considering the last excuse was a funeral, my cousin’s baby shower was a much-welcome reason to visit my hometown.
August has been an absolute whirlwind so far.
I kicked my month off with a quick four-day trip to the White Mountains of eastern Arizona to work on two separate but physically close wildfires (the Indian Creek and the Bronco) on both the San Carlos Apache Tribal Lands and the Fort Apache (White Mountain) Tribal Lands.
Despite a fire assignment that took up exactly half of my July, I did find quite a bit of time to get a good amount of summer reading in.
7/12.
Well, this one was a doozy.
I just wrapped up a 14-day fire assignment on the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park for the Dragon Bravo Fire.
Monsoons are here (kinda), which means I no longer have to spend every single second of every single day glued to my work phone in case something catches fire and I have to unexpectedly head into work.
Which means I can now use my weekends as intended: Finding and exploring all the places in Arizona that don’t have cellphone service.
This past weekend, it was the Mormon Mountain area, including a dispersed campsite along a forest road and a day hike to the summit of the mountain overlooking Arizona’s largest natural lake — Mormon Lake.
6/12.
Despite two fire assignments this month, I did find time to finish a handful of books.
After a late start to fire season, things are finally getting going here in northern Arizona.
I spent a big chunk of last week and this past weekend out in the northeast corner of the state for the Bridge Creek Fire, a lightning-caused wildfire that was burning on one side of Navajo Mountain out near Tonalea, Ariz., along the Arizona-Utah border.
My Incident Management Team got an order for the fire Tuesday, and were out there Wednesday morning to take command of the fire.
5/12.
