Monosson jumped out of the hot tub, ran down to his hotel room and called the Resort at Paws Up, where the party had booked accommodations for the following night.
He wasn't calling to cancel the reservation. He just wanted to make sure the road to the resort near Greenough was still open. Reassured that it was, Monosson and his family drove the 430 miles to the Blackfoot Valley the next day.
“I think we've done pretty much everything except for water sports by the lake, because that's closed,” he said. “So we did whitewater rafting, we did the ATV cruise. We're going to a ghost town today.”
For much of the state, this year's tourism season is pretty much business as usual. In fact, better than usual. Hotels and motels are seeing strong bookings, and many campgrounds and RV parks are full. River guides and fishing outfitters, while heeding midday fishing restrictions, are still taking boatloads of customers to their favorite stretches of water.
But for businesses and workers in Seeley Lake, which has been besieged by the Jocko Lakes fire, the situation looks grim. This is the height of the tourist season, and a sizable section of Highway 83 - their highway - is closed. Drivers who venture down nearby roads are being asked to slow down because of the heavy smoke and firefighting equipment.
Two nearby state parks - Seeley Lake and Placid Lake - have also been closed.
No tourists are being allowed in to visit, anyway.
The town's tourism-based businesses have lost two weekends, and Double Arrow Resort general manager Bonnie Philliber is hoping they won't lose more.
In addition to a good number of hotel guests, two wedding receptions and a family reunion at the Double Arrow had to be canceled. However, during the last few days, local residents have been allowed in to use the golf course and eat at the restaurant, which has helped offset the lack of business a little.
“The lodge and the golf course - everything is still intact. We're very thankful to the firefighters for holding the line. We're just really anxious to reopen,” said Philliber, who has been with the resort since 1989.
A line of people is waiting to stay at the Double Arrow as soon as the closures are lifted, she said. A wedding is still scheduled for this coming Saturday, and a conference remains booked for Aug. 20.
“This is our busy season,” Philliber noted. “This is when we really determine our year.”
The months of July and August, she said, determine how many staff the resort can keep until the next tourism season. During the summer, Double Arrow employs about 60 workers, she said; even the seasonal jobs trickle down and affect others in the community.
The wildfire season of 2000 was not a banner one for tourists, and neither was 2003, Philliber said. However, this is the first fire season to ever affect the resort directly.
Tourism began to slow about three weeks ago, as soon as people started hearing about the extreme fire conditions, said Ron Cox of the Seeley Lake Area Chamber of Commerce.
Time will tell how long it takes for local businesses to recover, Cox said, but he for one is betting they get back on their feet eventually.
“The economy is still very diversified here. The town's not going to go belly-up,” Cox said. “It's going to hurt, but it's not going to go belly-up.”
Already, he said, the chamber has started to get inquiries from potential visitors wondering about September.
A good portion of the credit for that, he added, should go to local and state tourism agencies. They have been working hard to remind would-be tourists not to cross Montana off their lists.
Instead of focusing on canceled reservations, closed roads and temporary evacuations, Montana's various visitors bureaus and tourism offices have concentrated on drawing attention to the percent” of the state that remains unaffected by wildfires, said Sarah Lawlor of the Montana Promotion Division's Travel Montana.
National news media zeroed in on the places experiencing the most extreme conditions after Gov. Brian Schweitzer declared Montana a disaster area, she said.
He had to make that declaration in order to get help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Lawlor said. Now, he is also spreading the word that, while some parts of the state are undoubtedly at risk, the rest is safe to visit.
“We don't want to scare people away by any means,” she said. “Generally, as an industry, we are just trying to stay calm and positive throughout these fires and make sure we offer travelers an alternative.”
Wildfires are part of the state's ecology, she noted, and most residents have come to expect them sometime during the summer or early fall. Most businesses also realize the fires will keep returning year after year, and are trying to find ways to work around them.
“Because Montana is such a wild, undeveloped state compared to the rest of the U.S., we do have these issues,” Lawlor said, “but it certainly doesn't impact the entire state, because we are 93 million acres.”
Montana has seen some significant wildfire seasons in recent years, but they didn't seem to have a big impact on tourism, said Norma Nickerson, director of the Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research at the University of Montana.
Nonresident visits have increased at a steady average of 2 percent per year for the past decade to pass the 10 million mark in 2005, she noted. The numbers did flatten in 2003, she added, largely because wildfires that year scorched wide swaths of Glacier National Park.
Usually, wildfires will hurt only those tourist-based businesses closest to the flames, she said. However, the larger tourism economy will suffer whenever wildfires hit the region's most popular attractions, such as in 2003, when they closed parts of Glacier National Park, or two years ago, when they shut down Alberton Gorge.
Glacier got off to a slow start this year, but not because of any fires, said Libby Baker of Davidson Travel. Rather, road-construction projects discouraged some visitors from entering the park early in the season.
It appears they're making up for lost time now, she added.
“I have heard of a lot of folks coming in and exploring both sides of that park,” she said. “And preliminary numbers in Yellowstone are better than ever. They're already having a bang-up year.”
Even western Montana's airports are seeing more traffic. At Missoula International Airport, general aviation is up significantly over last year, with July alone bringing in 3,549 passengers compared to 2,911 passengers in July of last year.
“When you have a big fire, you also have a lot of different types of people around it,” Nickerson said. “Hotels might sometimes have a higher occupancy rate.”
While firefighters aren't out buying souvenirs from retail shops, they are reserving a lot of rooms at hotels and motels, she noted.
Quite a few have booked rooms at the Hilton Garden Inn in Missoula, reported director of sales and marketing Denise Moore. In general, the hotel has seen an increase in walk-in activity and late reservations.
Some of them, she said, are guests from western Montana towns that have seen a lot of recent wildfire activity.
At the DoubleTree Hotel across town, reservations have reflected a typical busy August, said general manager Dan Carlino. In addition to tourists, the hotel also has a number of large groups scheduled to use its facilities.
“It's just a very, very busy convention season,” Carlino said. “We've been full all week.”
It appears most lodging facilities in western Montana are also full. As of Friday afternoon, Glacier Country's online room tracker showed only a handful of local businesses with vacancies - out of a total list of 130.
Few out-of-town guests, the Hilton's Moore added, have expressed any concern about the region's fires. Still, the hotel makes sure to pass along daily updates about fires, road closures and air quality to its front-line staff.
“We try to stay as much up-to-date as possible so we can answer our guests' questions,” she said.
Disseminating up-to-date information has become a primary mission for Montana's tourism agencies during the wildfire season, said Racene Friede, executive director of the Glacier Country Tourism Region.
Her office is working with local and state tourism partners to compile accurate, timely information with the goal of sharing it with local businesses, she said. It also has a “do and don't list” that directs employees to share the information with tourists in an honest, calm, encouraging manner.
For the most part, Montana's tourists have been very understanding - and flexible, Friede said. They don't seem to mind adjusting their plans if a certain town is evacuated, or a certain park is off-limits. But they need to know what's still available, she said.
“Fire does impact travel. There's no doubt about that,” she said. “The whole idea is just to help the traveler and help the local businesses because it really does impact both.”
The Paws Up Resort near Greenough is one of many western Montana businesses receiving those daily fire updates, said general manager Terre Short.
It has found them very useful in rescheduling certain activities, and in keeping guests informed, she said. Guests at Paws Up are aware of the fires in the area, but for the most part, they haven't wanted to cancel their plans.
The resort did have to cancel some outfitting trips when a fire erupted inside the Bob Marshall Wilderness, she noted, and a couple of reservations were withdrawn by people with asthma and heart conditions.
It was especially helpful to have recent information about the region's air quality so guests with health problems could decide for themselves whether they should come, Short said.
“We're just being real honest with them,” she said. “It doesn't behoove us to get them out here and have it not be the right experience for them.”
The resort can accommodate about 70 people, and currently has more than 60 guests, she noted. A lot of those guests are children, and they are especially enjoying the company of all the displaced “evacuee” pets Paws Up has taken in over the last few days.
It started when a Seeley Lake resident asked the resort to keep two horses after her family had to evacuate, Short said. Now, Paws Up is hosting more than 240 animals, including 71 horses, 78 dogs, 36 cats, 38 chickens, five ducks and three pigs.
Otherwise, life is relatively normal for guests at the resort, she said. They can still go fly-fishing and horseback riding, but now tend to schedule those outdoor activities for the mornings and evenings.
“They're still doing the normal things, just the schedule's changed,” she said.
The Missoula Convention and Visitors Bureau is linking up with other groups, including Travel Montana and Glacier Country, to keep visitors plied with suggestions so they don't get the idea there's nothing to do in Montana.
“One of the biggest issues that we're combatting is that, because of national media, the perception is that all of Montana is on fire, and that isn't a reality,” said Barb Neilan, executive director of the Missoula Visitors Bureau. “Public safety is our No. 1 issue, but we also don't want people to be canceling their plans when there's so much they can still do. It's just a matter of shifting how things are done.”
A lot of businesses are rescheduling activities for earlier or later in the day, or moving them back a few days to wait out temporary closures, she said.
In the meantime, her group is helping to remind visitors of all the alternative activities they might be participating in. Even on the smokiest days, Missoula offers a wealth of indoor activities for anyone seeking relief from the haze - and some fun.
“We want people to know they can still come and have a good time,” Neilan said.
When recreating in western Montana's public lands, guests need to keep the wildfire danger in mind, said Nan Christianson, public affairs officer for the Bitterroot National Forest.
They should abide by any restrictions and refrain from lighting any fires, she said. Also, people with respiratory problems should pay special attention to air-quality warnings.
That said, people should not feel discouraged from visiting the Bitterroot National Forest - despite the presence of several fires burning near or inside it, she said.
“There are still plenty of opportunities to recreate on the Bitterroot National Forest,” Christianson said. “The vast majority of the forest is still open. There are still fish waiting to be caught and mountains waiting to be climbed. We only ask that (visitors) be safe.”
With summer winding down and only a few weeks left before school starts, a lot of people are probably looking wistfully at the Bitterroot, she said. They should know that all campgrounds and the majority of roads and trails are open.
“We make note of all of our closures,” Christianson said, “but we forget to tell people what's still open.”
At Travel Montana, people often call for information about what's open and what isn't, but hardly any people cancel their plans after learning a particular road or park is closed, Lawlor said.
“As long as we don't make the national news, people don't even know that the fires are going on, and their vacations are going on wonderfully,” Lawlor said. “It's really just a matter of perception.”
As a matter of fact, vacationer Ari Monosson thinks all that smoke filling the sky makes Montana's sunsets even more beautiful. When he first arrived in the Blackfoot Valley, he said, the heavy haze made the evening horizon glow orange and gold.
Still, he was glad when the skies cleared up a bit, however briefly, so he could see some of that Big Sky Country the state is so proud of.
“Today it's more hazy again,” Monosson reported. “Kind of like in L.A.”
Reporter Tyler Christensen can be reached at 523-5215 or tyler.christensen@lee.net
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