Smoke Signals

If you smelled smoke in Wisconsin today, you may have thought it was the now winless Assumption Middle School football team sending up smoke signals for help.

In reality, we are dealing with smoke from a massive wildfire raging through the Boundary Waters park area in Minnesota. Yes, hundreds and hundreds of miles away and we could smell it and see it in Wisconsin Rapids and even over in Iola.

This is especially devastating in such a beautiful natural area. But it sure made for some unique sunrise photos! Since Carter had a football game today I just happened to have my camera in the car on the way to work. No, the sky was not blood red like above, but the camera sure captured the "heat" of the moment.
The sky was not black either. Isn't it interesting that this is how my camera saw it? Even the wisps of smoke or light clouds take on a new aura.

Love the photos -- just not the reason for them.

I did take a few at the football game, too, naturally. But as you can see, they are mostly blurry. The sun was just at the right angle for me not to see my camera's viewing screen. So I just held up the camera, took random shots and hoped to get #81 in them and hoped they were in focus.

When we got to Auburndale (a tad bit late due to a detour), we'd already missed our first score on the kickoff return. We did score again later and so did those large farm kids. So yes, we did lose another game by a touchdown. But the boys were OK with that. One of these days, we'll get a "W".

Carter ready on the kicking team. He finally had his first tackle today!! And yes, the camera sat in the bag so I missed it on "film" but have it in my head. I made sure I had it out the rest of the time, but he did not have a repeat performance.

Besides being a kicking team regular, he subbed in on offense and defense again.

Kickoff coverage. (Sorry so blurry -- would have been a nice shot if I would have known he was in the frame.)

More kickoff coverage. Heading straight for the kick returner.

This time, a teammate got there first. Nice tackle.

Don't those gloves make him look fast? A teammate gave them to him since he got new ones. I thought that was generous. In fact, the way we see it from the stands, it seems the whole team is pretty supportive of each other. I like that.

Maybe by this time next week, there will be no more need for smoke signals.