Feeling the Heat

We left the coast and turned inland toward an RV park situated right along the picturesque shores of Clear Lake. Once again, we were ready for a little heat after a week on the chilly coast. We found some heat alright, and it was nothing like I imagined it would be.

As we were driving down the 101 and about to take an eastbound exit toward Clear Lake, we saw a huge plume of smoke quickly expanding in the distance. We exited as planned and realized we were traveling unnervingly close to a fire and were quickly getting enveloped by dark smoke. I was too nervous at this point to take pictures, so I don’t have a great shot of our view when we were in the worst of the fire, only what it looked like as we approached. I was also frantically googling to try to figure out if we should keep going or turn back (as if that was a realistic option at our size), how large the fire was, when it had started, etc.

It turns out the fire had started no more than an hour before and had rapidly grown. It was forcing evacuations and closing roads within a few miles of where we were. Yikes. It’s one thing to experience the residual effects of wildfires as tourists passing through. For instance, we have had our fair share of smoke and poor air quality that has forced us to re-route, has obstructed our views and kept us cooped up inside.

But it’s altogether different to be so close to a fire that you see flames and wonder if the road ahead of you has been abruptly closed-off; to witness families huddled along the side of the highway, watching in horror as the fire tears up the hillside of their town. I can only imagine that some of them were forced out of their homes without warning, with nowhere to go, consumed by the reel of worst-case-scenarios playing out in their heads.

The whole thing brought me to tears as we pulled out of the gray smoke clouds and away from danger. To think that each year thousands of people in the Western US cannot react to an impending fire by simply dragging their homes out of the danger zone. What would it be like to live each fire season with constant anxiety and fear? How terrible and not to mention exhausting.

It’s not hard to see how fires happen. Everything in and around Calpella, where the fire was, and Nice, where we stayed (however briefly- see below), is bone dry. (The picture above is one of the only pictures I took in Nice) It wouldn’t take more than a poorly placed cigarette butt or a spark from a stray truck chain or a lawn mower to start a flame that quickly spreads uninhibited. In fact, I’m sort of surprised it doesn’t happen more often. Or maybe it does, and the fire department is super fast and efficient? Tough to say.

With the fire behind us and the sky returning to the inland California mainstay-blue, we tried to pull it together and get situated in Nice. Despite its name, Nice (supposedly pronounced like “niece”) is anything but. It was so incredibly trashy – literally there was trash everywhere –dusty and dirty, and just plain ugly.

Part of it had to do with the historically low lake levels of Clear Lake. There were warnings on signposts against swimming and even letting dogs near the water for fear of toxic algae poisoning. But it was made all the more disgusting by the level of deception the RV park engaged in to get us there and the complete disappointment it turned out to be.

Aurora RV Park has an attractive website. It features the park’s lakeside proximity and all of the free amenities it offers related to the lake – canoes, kayaks, a swimming beach, paddle boards, boat rentals, etc. Not to mention the abundance of activities available in the cute little town of Nice. How charming! I was honestly thinking this would be one of our better stops. Yeah, it was none of that.

Instead, the lake is completely unusable at its historically low levels, a fact that was not even hinted at on the RV park’s website. The lake smells terrible because of this fact, making it hard to be anywhere nearby. Only a few of the sites were lakeside while the majority (ours included) were across the road and tightly packed together in a gravel parking lot.

Altogether this wasn’t great, but if this had been the worst of it, we probably could have sucked it up and made it work – we aren’t that soft. What put us over the edge was being surrounded by long-term residents and all that came with them: RV’s that were not all the way functional; loud music, loud voices, and car repairs at all hours of the night; large dogs in crates and cages; and people loitering around constantly. Why was a guy walking around the RVs with a flashlight from 11 pm – 2 am? And no, he was not park security making the rounds. In short, we didn’t feel safe there, so we had to go.

This was made complicated, however, by the ongoing fire. The road we took into town was the same road we had to take to get out and back to our next planned stop on the coast. Some sources were saying the road was closed while others were silent, suggesting that the road was open. Which was it? Again, we can’t just blindly drive down a road that might be closed hoping to find a turnaround big enough for us if needed. We haven’t yet been in a stop-all-traffic-and-facilitate-a-turn-around situation, and we are hoping to avoid it.

The only other way out was to go all the way around the lake and practically to Sacramento, where we would turn South only to come North again. This would have meant a 5-or-so hour detour. With all of these obstacles and unknowns, things were tense inside our tiny home.

We made do for a day and a half but then got serious about leaving, and fast. We called the Cal Fire information line to ask about the road only to leave a message and wait for a call back. We also sought out the truth by calling businesses at the other end of the supposedly-closed road to see what they knew. Eventually we found out the road was open.

In the meantime, we had to find a new place to stay on super short notice. Long story short, we found a spot for a few days at the KOA near Manchester, which is on the coast off of Highway 1. We felt like we really lucked out. After all, the KOA was just a few miles from where we were staying the next week when my family came to visit.

As we pulled out of our site and away from Nice, we drove through Calpella and were surprised to see few signs of the fire that had ravaged the area just two days before. It had already been mostly contained and the evacuations were lifted. We pulled off the 101 and followed our GPS westward only to be confronted with a road sign reading “vehicles over 30 feet not advised, next 40 miles”. We looked at each other and shrugged, continuing to follow our directions that were supposedly RV-approved.

We began a rapid ascent and quickly realized why caution was advised. The road was not only steep but disturbingly narrow. It wound around the sides of cliffs and hugged the exposed curves of the mountain. This was not rocky mountain terrain like we had seen before, but rather hillsides covered with dirt and tall grass, land that presumably washes away swiftly in a hard rain.

It would have been a beautiful drive in an Audi convertible, but the elevation changes and blind turns in our 40-foot 5th wheel had my palms sweating with fright. We met several logging trucks along the way. They didn’t slow down for a second and made us glad we didn’t meet them in the middle of a wide turn.

We thought we were in the clear once we reached the other side of the mountain and made it to wine country. The drive through Anderson Valley, with its neat rows of grape vines concealing the arid hills, was a stunning contrast to the bleak landscape from which we had just escaped. The elevated background raised our hopes for what lie ahead.

Little did we know the mountain drive was just the beginning of our harrowing California coast adventure. The turn from Highway 128 to Highway 1, just south of Mendocino, California, again advised against vehicles over 30 feet in length. But at this point, what were our options?! We had no way of turning around. And we knew the KOA allowed rigs as long as ours, with Highway 1 as the only available route. That’s right, Highway 1 isn’t just the fastest, or easiest route – it is literally the only route. So this 30-foot rule must be routinely broken, right? And if other people can do it, then surely, we can too. Right?

Let’s just say thank goodness Alex is fearless and (sometimes) overly confident. I was a nervous wreck for the first 20 minutes of that coastal drive. Not only were we RIGHT on the edge of cliffs, some of which had no guard rails, but we were met with the same tight, blind curves as the first mountain pass of the day. I had visions of one trailer wheel slipping over the edge and then BAM the whole thing suddenly stumbles down the jagged rocks and crashes into the sea below – with us attached.

The scariest part of the drive was a series of three switchbacks that put us on at least a 12% incline in the middle of a sharp curve. We had to take up a lane and a half to get through while we could only partially see if there was anyone coming from the other way. That sure gets your blood pumping!

Soon after the world’s scariest switchback, the road flattened out and moved inland a bit. We had a few more bouts with cliff-side driving, but we made it to the KOA unscathed. What a contrast from the junky RV park in Nice! We felt like we had finally MADE IT now that we had a playground, an extra-large site with some privacy, a pool and hot tub, and no fire ban! Willa’s face says it all – we were relieved to be back on the coast.

There is very little to do in the town of Manchester and surrounding areas, but the girls and I kept busy at the playground and the campsite most days. As a family we found a nearby hiking trail with great ocean views and biked down to the beach at Manchester State Park to watch angry waves crash raucously on the shore. It was a very low-key end to the week, and we were glad for it. We also had a lot to look forward to. My family was joining us at a rented house in just a few days, and we couldn’t wait to see them!