Studio711.com – Ben Martens

It’s wildfire season around here and this has been the Summer of Smoke. Winds have been blowing slightly differently and we’ve had a lot of VERY smoky days with low visibility and terrible air quality. One day the smoke was so thick that it blocked out the sun completely and it was raining ash.

There are a lot of big fires in the area, but the one I’ve been following is the Norse Peak fire. You can read all the details on the inciweb page or in various news articles, but the basic info is that 13 separate fires were ignited by lightning on August 10 and 11. Those quickly combined and threatened, among other things, the Crystal Mountain ski area. They were forced to evacuate everyone and the smoke was so thick that they couldn’t bring in helicopters for water drops. Even firefighters were evacuated at one point because they were in danger of having their exit route cut off by the fire. At the worst point, fire was visible coming down the ridge just north of the base area.

Thanks to incredibly long hours by various fire departments, no structural damage has occurred to the resort yet. It sounds like they are getting the fire under control now. We had a small amount of rain and winds have shifted so that the smoke is clearing out. It does sound like they will be closed for the remaining couple weeks of the summer season. Follow their Facebook page for updates.

I didn’t know a lot about Fort Peck, MT before I visited, but it’s a really interesting place. The town started as a trading post along the Missouri River. In 1934, The Army Corps of Engineers rolled in and built a new town about 2 miles from the original town to house all the workers for the big dam project. A number of shanty towns grew up around the area too to house the ~10,000 workers. Some of those buildings are still around, including the hotel where we had brunch on Sunday.

The dam is a monstrosity and it’s incredible to think about workers in the 30s, 40s and 50s building something that enormous. The dam itself is made up of rock and earth. It’s a shade under 4 miles long and 250 feet tall. The coast line of the reservoir is longer than the coast line of California. The reservoir is the 5th largest man made lake (by volume) in the United States.

To get enough dirt for the project, they dredged a bunch of dirt and pumped it to the dam. We went swimming in one of those dredge cut lakes while we were there. They had to modify their design in flight because part of the dam slid while they were building it.

PBS has a great video about the building of the dam. Unfortunately we can’t watch it online here, but it’s a regional thing so maybe it will work for you. Even if it doesn’t work, you should be able to watch a ~3 minute preview.

In the picture below, you can see the road that runs along the top of the dam. To the right there is a park by smaller lake below the dam and that’s where we had the family reunion. Up on the hill on the right side of the picture is the town of Fort Peck. I hope that we’ll get to go back and visit again some day!

Very early in the life of my F150, I noticed a pretty bad scratch on the hood. I don’t know if I put it there or if it came that way, but I just did my best to ignore it.

After 10,000 miles, I finally realized I should just ask the Internet so I posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook asking for help.

Sixteen minutes later, MattM replied and suggested that I use Meguiar’s M2 Mirror Glaze Fine-Cut Cleaner. I had a couple other things in my cart and got free same-day shipping.

I’ve never used anything like this, but I grabbed a clean towel and went for it. I started with a small drop at first, saw quick results and did a few more small applications. Voila! It was GONE! Not just gone like I couldn’t really notice anymore if I didn’t look closely, but totally gone. It worked so easily and so well that I tackled another scratch towards the back of the truck. Thanks for the tip Matt!

While we were camping a couple weekends ago, we came up with a business idea. I don’t know what it’s called yet, but it’s our take on the ultimate “glamping” campground. Here are some of the features that we’d offer (for a small fee of course.)

• When you arrive at the campground, we’ll set up your tent or camper while you relax in the bar.
• There are two sides to the camp ground: one for people who want to party around the camp fire until the wee hours of the morning and one for people who want to get up early. There are different quiet hours rules on each side.
• Don’t wake up early on your vacation. We’ll drop off a dutch oven on hot coals with an egg/sausage/bacon/potato scramble in it. It will be hot and ready when you are.
• Did you buy a big fancy truck but never learn how to back your boat down the ramp to the water? Skip the pressure of everyone watching you and toss us the keys. We’ll do it for you.
• Swing by the on-site butcher and pick our some steaks for dinner. We’ll even cook them and deliver them if you want us to.
• You’ve watched a lot of Bear Grylls and Survivorman in your life, but you still don’t know how to start a fire. No worries! We’ll swing by and get one going for you.
• You’re probably tired from all this pampering so let us take down your camp for you.

This is so ridiculous, I feel like this probably exists already in some place like San Francisco or Portland.

For the third year in a row, I headed over to the Marymoor beer festival. This year’s crew was the same as last year: Don, Logan, Tim, Luke and me. The big change this year was that Chelsea and Tyla were our designated drivers. THANK YOU to both of them for driving us and watching the kids while we sampled the delicious beverages.

We stepped up our game by making pretzel necklaces to help cleanse the palette a bit between beers. But otherwise we stuck with our standard plan: arrive around the time they open, sample some beers, eat some lunch and then finish up our sampling tokens.

There were 131 brewers at the event and they all had at least 2 (some had many more) types of beer to try. With only 8 drink tokens (and one set of organs to process it all), you can barely scratch the surface of the available options.

In two months, much of the US will experience a total solar eclipse. Solar eclipses are rare enough, but one where the path of totality crosses so close to your home could easily be a once in a lifetime event.

Destin over at Smarter Every Day has a great video about the upcoming eclipse:

Are you going to make an effort to watch it?

P.S. I will never be able to hear the words “Total Eclipse” without thinking about this…

The other day on Facebook, Ken posted this: “You never regret being kind.” My snarky mind immediately tried to come up with a joking way to refute that. A story from college came to mind and I was surprised to see that I hadn’t blogged about it before…

After coming out of a class, I waited for the bus to get back to the dorm. (It was about a 10-15 minute walk from class to my dorm so sometimes I’d take a bus if the weather was bad.) I wasn’t paying much attention but as the bus rolled up and opened the door, another guy and I arrived at the same time to get on board. I stepped back and motioned him to go first. As soon as his foot touched the bus, a couple guys in suits appeared out of nowhere, grabbed him and asked “Are you getting on this bus?”

I thought, “HA! Sucker. I’m glad I let you go first!”

The bus started moving after we all got on and one of the guys in suits said, “I’m proud to announce that Joe is our one millionth CityBus rider!” He ended up winning a $500 gift card to the mall.

A friend of mine on the bus saw the whole thing and he got a good laugh at my expense.