Fire Near the Highway

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Whenever my wife and I pay a visit to our second home in Brookings, Oregon, we normally drive all the way up Interstate 5 to Grants Pass, and then cut across to the coast using Route 199 (which cuts back down into California and hits Federal Highway 101 just north of Crescent City).  The Carr Fire (massive forest fire near Redding along Interstate 5 north of Sacramento), and two fires flanking the 199, convinced us to take a different route.

The western coastal route, once you get past San Francisco, has a little more twist to it (though, I will admit, the 199 makes roads like the Ortega Highway in Southern California seem tame), but technically it is shorter, and burns less gas.  The trip begins on the I-5 (on the north side of Los Angeles and the south side of The Grapevine), then we cut across to San Rafael by way of the I-580 north of Santa Nella, and then take the 101 from there all the way up to Brookings.  While there were two fires along the way on that path to Oregon, it didn't look like they were hugging the highway like the Carr Fire or the two 199 fires were on our potentially alternate route.  The only hazard with the more westerly route is that we'd have to try to hit the 580 early enough to miss rush hour into San Francisco.

We hit the traffic (about mid-way along the 580 from the 5 to the 101) at 4:30 am.  There was a slight bit of traffic, but it broke up rather quickly, and once we paid our $5 toll to get over the bridge and got north of San Rafael, the traffic dwindled to nearly nothing.  I am figuring if we were even a half hour later, it would have been much more tortuous traffic-wise.

Then, we approached the fire areas on the south side of the Mendocino National Forest (about a two and a half hour drive north of San Francisco), while we experienced a couple of blackened hill banks next to the freeway, the fire on the west side of Lakeport looked like it was essentially contained (or at least from our perspective on the western side of the hills).  We saw no flames, or smoke in the air.

As we traveled further north, the larger fire was definitely present.  We could faintly smell the smoke in the air, and could see a glow over the hills as dark smoke blanketed the beautifully forested landscape.  Again, however, there was no danger of any part of the raging fire bothering us on the 101.  In fact, there wasn't even any burned areas that we could see.

I am figuring the same was likely not true near the Carr Fire, or the two fires (one in California, one in Oregon) along the 199.

Up here, now, the landscape is hazy with the sun breaking through above.  The grasses are glistening with dew, the animals are hopping about, and the air smells fresher than the smokey air south of here, and much crisper than the smog infested air of Southern California.

The caretaker on the property was happy to see us . . . but we had driven straight through to this location from our home hugging the northern San Diego County line.  We have been on the road over 16 hours taking only a break for breakfast, so the thing we were most happy to see was the bed.

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