Those clouds you’ve seen hovering over us the past few days aren’t clouds. It’s smoke, from the wildfires in California.

See the satellite images here.

In Mid-August, I took a vacation to California. I headed west cause I felt that a change would do me good, see some old friends, good for the soul. I drove up the coast on Hgwhy 1 from Santa Monica through Big Sur to Napa Valley and then back down the same way.

We had some warnings on our phones like an Amber Alert but this was about the fires up in Napa. We were headed out that day anyways so we didn’t fret. We went and checked in to an AirBnB in Carmel Valley, we were there for a quick minute when the neighbor knocked on the door and said, “Hey guys, didn’t know if you saw the fire over there but thought you should get ready to leave in case they evacuate us, I’m headed out”. We go to look outside and there was a fire in sight across the valley rolling towards us slowly.

That’s all we needed, we left and drove back down the coast stopped at Pfeiffer Beach and hit an Inn off the highway in Big Sur.

I can be stubborn, so even though some of the forest was on fire I wanted to go on a hike, as that was part of the reason I went out to Big Sur. So the next morning before dawn I got out of the inn and drove down the road till I got to the trail and started my journey.

The fires were poppin up like crazy down the coast line as we made our way down. We saw helicopters flying through the ash clouds to help put out the fires. We ended up safely in Marina Del Ray for the last night in Cali.

I’d do this vacation again in a heartbeat, I’ll probably do it again years down the road and hopefully it won’t be wildfire season. Ts and Ps to our California neighbors.