Panguitch Balloon Festival 2017

 And some other stuff from around the house.  Eric with niece and nephews.

 A big pile-o-kids on their Mommy.

 Driving over Highway 14 to Highway 89 on Saturday, June 24. It wasn't cloudy, this was SMOKE from the  Brian Head Fire. It's been awful and huge.

 We could look directly at the sun that morning, the cloud cover was so thick. It made for a very bright, red orb.

 Here we are descending into the Highway 89 valleys, heading to Bryce Canyon.  We were meeting up with Nick and Kaylee and kids who had been camping there since Thursday.  We met at Ruby's Inn right outside of the Park at 8:30 a.m. We picked up the kids and their van, Nick and Kaylee hopped into our truck and went back into Bryce for a horse back trail ride to the bottom of the canyon. I'm sure he'll post some photos of their campout on their blog soon.

 Mike and I and the kids headed to Panguitch. It's only about a 20 minute drive away.

 Many hot air balloons had lifted off earlier in the day and were now dotting the valley.  We drove around in town until we found one that was close enough to watch them take it down and deflate. Two of them, actually. It was fun to observe the team work!

 Almost done!  Katie and her kids were driving over from Cedar City, too. They just didn't get as early a start as Mike and I did.  While waiting for them, we sat in the shade, had some snacks.

 Once the rest of the kids arrived (sans strollers, I might add! yikes), we let them go into the bounce house (Rachel's favorite) and the inflatable "obstacle course" (Corbin's favorite). You can see both of them in the bounce house above. Rachel's shirt is turquoise, and Corbin's is navy.

 What I didnt' take any pictures of was ALL TEN of us having lunch together at the buffet at Ruby's Inn up by Bryce. After their trail ride, Nick and Kaylee treated us all to lunch. It did take us a while to meet up, but we did eventually. And the meal was very good. Very noisy, very messy, but very fun. Too bad we didn't think to take a photo. But really, is that possible? We were too busy wrangling food and utensils and babies to pay any attention to cameras!

I drove home to Cedar City that afternoon because Mike was  SO SLEEPY he could NOT keep his eyeballs open. But I did poke him a few times to look at the smoke and take a few photos. Wow. What a devastating fire this has become. It started June 17th.

 That 's not a fluffy cumulous cloud. It's a smoke plume.

 When we got home, we found our cleaned-up campers, the Owens family!  They had been at a family reunion at Fish Lake and drove down so they could see Katie and kids. And so they could use our showers. ha.

 All my girls. Well, the ones that were here that day. :-)

 Some of them were alert enough to play games. I konked out and went to bed after snapping this photo.

 Jonny and Corbin

 The smoke plumes on Monday. We had clear skies that day, but the previous day, Cedar City and valley was FILLED with smoke.  I could see it. But I could not even smell it, my nose is so clogged up still. 

 Also on Monday, Katie had to take Hailey to the instacare in town. Hailey had a double ear infection, poor gal. I'm sure that little Saturday trek up and over the mountain didn't feel very good to either of those little kiddos with their cloggy noses and head.

Again, not a cumulus cloud, but a smoke plume. It's just gaining like crazy.