Ya'll probably remember that fire since it made the national news. Well over 1000 homes and tens of thousands of acres destroyed. My wife and I were at a resort just a few miles away for our anniversary and decided to see what it looks like now. The first thing that struck me was how the trees weren't completely burnt up. In a lot of areas, maybe the bottom 2/3 of the tree were charred, but the top is still green.







The trees still had some foliage or needles on them even in the area that burned.







A lot of people lost everything.















Even the destruction wasn't complete. Some houses were completely destroyed, but the neighbor across the street's house could still be standing with no damage at all.







There was a house close to where we took this picture that had burned down, but a kid's swingset was in the front yard completely untouched. It seemed pretty new since the colors were very vibrant. It made my wife very sad to see that and imagine what all those families are going through.







This was kind of a sad view. The watertower surrounded by all that destruction, standing in the middle of a burnt-out forest. This is highway 71 coming from Austin.









There was a tremendous amount of devastation; those people are going to have a lot of work in front of them to pick their lives back up and rebuild.