42. Laundry Day
We drove cross country to go to Glacier National Park, and mid-drive the park caught on fire. We got there and they directed us to the west side of the park because that was still open. We spent the night there and all was well. At first. In the morning, we decided to do a little hiking and swim in a lake. It was beautiful, but ash was falling like snow.
It should have been alarming, but there were other people around, at least for a while, and we figured if it was something serious certainly someone would have told us…After swimming, we decided to go down to a little town we saw because they had a laundromat. We thought we might treat ourselves to some clean clothes and a lunch or something.
We packed up the car and tent and drove down. At that point, there was a flurry of activity and our car was stopped. As they halted us, they were checking lists to mark us off…because the park had been evacuated and we were “missing.” Turns out, the fire had turned and was very close to us. Like, so close that as we drove down and out we could see flames.
We never really could comprehend how totally screwed we almost were. And it was all because I was annoyed that one guy on the trip kept wearing just one pair of shorts. He had other clothes he claimed were dirty, but kept saying the shorts weren’t dirty. They were; he smelled. He needed to wash something so I made it out like I wanted to do everyone’s laundry even though I just wanted to wash something for him in hopes he would change. If I hadn’t been so “excited” about laundry, we’d have never left.