Eastern Washington and the Carlton Complex Wildfire

On August 8th we made one of our regular trips to eastern Washington and spent a day, as we often do, orchid hunting and sightseeing.  Having traveled through the mountains we decided to head through the area that had just been burned by Washington's worst-ever wildfires, the Carlton Complex wildfires.  In fact, the fires were not completely out when we went through and the area still smelled of smoke and was hazy from the smoke.  We traveled south our of Winthrop through the Methow Valley and the towns of Carlton and Pateros.  The whole area seemed to have been burned over with many homes and buildings destroyed.  It was also obvious, however, that a great effort had been made to save the homes in the area and there were any number of them that were surrounded by burned areas but that had not been touched by the fire.

Out of the area of the wildfires, we did some sightseeing and orchid hunting along the Columbia River, stopping at Beebe Springs Natural area to photograph the statues there, and stopping elsewhere to photograph a rare orchid we had been looking for, the Ute Ladies'-tresses and in the same area a butterfly (there were hundreds of them), probably the Mylitta Crescent.  Finished, we headed east across the Columbia Plateau where the wheat was being harvested and took some pictures there as well.