Western Railroad Discussion > Amtrak along Essex Montana

Stay At Home Series #50
We're 6 days into our 10 day trip to Montana and the smoke was getting thick from all the forest fires that were all around us.  We were on "stand-by" evacuation at the Izaak Walton Inn with one of the fires 5 miles away.
There was already smoke from forest fires in California and Canada when we first arrived and thinking "well this is not so bad".  Man, did things change in a hurry. Our first nigtht multiple fires started from thunder and lighting in the Whitefish and Glacier Park areas.  During  our second to last day and night in Whitefish sirens that sounded like air raid sirens were contantly going on and the smoke was so thick it looked like we were in a sea of fog.  Photos: 8/16/2018 Amtrak usually makes a stop at the Izaak Walton Inn, but on this day they dropped off a fire fighting team at a crossing just before the Inn along with it's other passengers.  The other 2 photos 8/18/2018 shows what it looked like around noon in Whitefish.  It kind of looks like the sun is going down with all the parking lot lights turning on and it smelt like one heck of a bbq everywhere.

George Cataulin
San Diego, CA
Left Coast Rail Videos



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/20 07:59 by gjc.

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Nice shot of the Builder! Looking at Essex in Google Maps it appears to be eastbound #8. During my 4 years at Missoula (with MRL, before relocating down to Laurel for 19 years) I had Essex earmarked as an area I wanted to go explore with the camera. Fortunately I hadn't yet slipped into my infamous "railfan hibernation", and was still pretty active. Especially fortunate: K-64/Kodak Processing was still King of the slide film world. But I never made the trip... And the smoke sure brings back some strange memories. I was with MRL from Day #1 (10-31-87) until my last service in May 2010. In the spring of '88 I started bragging to my parents back in Kansas just how beautiful western Montana was. So they made plans to come visit for a few days. Too bad a week before their planned arrival in Missoula the great fires at Yellowstone occurred. By the time they showed up, most of their drive through Montana was with terrible visibility. Smoke everywhere. I took them on a scenic spin up Bob Marshall & around Flathead Lake. What else could I do? Of course my Dad, from whom I inherited 98% of my playful smartass ability kept ribbing me: "OH YEAH!!! This is GREAT!!! I can see damn near 1/2 a mile!"  :^)

Lance/199

Nice Empire Builder angle, George.  That smoke looks so bad, not good for anyone with compromised lungs.

mapboy

mapboy Wrote:
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> Nice Empire Builder angle, George.  That smoke
> looks so bad, not good for anyone with compromised
> lungs.
>
> mapboy

I have asthma.  I brought along a mask with a carbon filter in it to filter out the smoke.  I only used this one day when I started to notice asthma symptoms surfacing.  My asthma gave me a little trouble for about week after I got home in San Diego.  I'm pretty sure it was from breathing in all that
smoke from the previous days.

George Cataulin
San Diego, CA
Left Coast Rail Videos