I'm about 20 miles north of the coastal fire. We are having evacuees at the high school. We're safe, but it's heartbreaking for the loss of homes and incredibly special places that are gone (Big Basin Redwoods--California's first state park, the camps where me, my children, and grandkids camped, had our outdoor ed weeks, to name a few). The air is somewhat breathable; we're just hoping the winds don't shift. We only have one road in and out and on a normal weekend, it's so choked with tourists that us locals can't even get to the grocery store without sitting on the highway for 40 minutes to go four miles. And it's been so much worse since the quarantine. People come here to get away, but really bring a lot of risk to us.
I hope everyone else is doing okay. It's going to be a rough fire season.
I hadn't been to Big Basin in years and I had a wild hare that I simply had to pack up everybody and go last Friday. I bought a couple souvenirs from the 110 year old beautiful stone and wooden park headquarters building. We wandered the paths and breathed in the air that those ancient, beautiful trees produce. Now it's all gone. We were there on Friday, and it was gone a few days after that. At least my grandkids got to experience it a little bit.