This Might Not Be A Drill

Had I mentioned that we went camping over Labor Day weekend (along with everybody else in Los Angeles)? No, no I hadn't.

We did. As a farewell to summer, we headed up the nearby slopes of Mt. Pinos (be careful how you pronounce that, now) for a weekend trip with some friends.

Katy and the kids headed up Friday afternoon and I joined them after work that evening. On Saturday we were having a fun time around camp when we noticed a plume of smoke rising to the east. The fire seemed to be between us and the freeway home.

Later in the afternoon we went down into town to see what the situation was. The road to the freeway was closed - not that it would have done us any good to get to the freeway, as it was closed in both directions. On top of that, the power was out in the small towns that dot the area. I figured that I was going to have to plan on taking the back way out of there the next morning, as I had a flight out of LAX early Sunday afternoon. We kept an eye on the smoke plume but it was quite a ways off and didn't really concern us.

We had just finished up dinner when the campground host came around with an update. The road that led to my "back way out" was being threatened by the fire, and the forest service was saying that they might have to close it in the next hour or two. They were recommending that people evacuate unless they were prepared to be stuck there for a while.

It didn't take long to decide what to do.

We broke camp quickly and were on our way in a half hour. Both the kids were upset - both of them were having problems making the distinction between "fire threatening our path out of here" and "fire threatening us" - but we kept calm and tried to keep them busy and reassured that we were safe.

Of course, by the time we got off the mountain the fire seemed to be under control and the road to the freeway was open. After all the commotion, we were home about 45 minutes after we pulled out of the campsite.

(But it might not have been a drill.)