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100% Contained. My Love/Hate Relationship with California Summers
Sigh. Another summer in California.
I’m writing this from a room at the Hampton Inn and Suites in Folsom, California. The famous state prison of Johnny Cash fame is just up the road. Given that the current temperature is 108 degrees Fahrenheit (44 Celsius), I’m not planning on breaking out of here anytime soon.
But we are indeed on the run.
We just drove 30 miles and lost 3000 vertical feet to “flee” from California’s latest fire. I use quotation marks because while we weren’t in any immediate danger, we also weren’t going to stick around to find out. A week of hot weather three standard deviations over the July norm and an AC on the fritz with no hope for repair anytime soon made leaving an easy decision.
The brutal heat, lack of measurable moisture, and the sudden spot fires moving evacuation zones up the hill faster than you could run was threatening to cut off US-50, one of the few highways up to our little mountain town.
The only real alternative, a winding, mostly two-lane road to Lake Tahoe was not something we wanted to negotiate at night. It would also put us on the wrong side of the Sierra Nevada and entail a 10 hour trip home to LA.
