Fire season!

Yes, it's that time of year again, when the West Coast fire season is in full swing - forest fires all through California and Oregon. The primary danger here in Grants Pass is smoke - and that totally depends on the wind direction. We'd managed to avoid it all until the last few days. The sudden thunderstorm last Sunday morning, when there were over 1,000 lightning strikes locally, started 67 separate forest fires in this area of Southern Oregon and the smoke now surrounds Grants Pass, where visibility has substantially diminished, but thankfully, the air quality is not critical yet - although you can see, smell and taste the smoke in the air.

The other threat from the forest fires is transportation - roads being closed by the fires and the firefighters' attempts to douse them. Last week, the I5 - the huge freeway that passes through here on its long journey all the way from Mexico to Canada - was closed for a while. Lucy just posted this extract from the local radio station:

"Riverbanks Road is now closed to everyone except for residents and emergency vehicles. Blockades have been set up on Riverbanks at Redwood Highway and at Robertson Bridge. Please see previous post for upgraded evacuation notices. West Pickett Creek, Shan Creek and Limpy Creek roads are now on Level 3 "Go" evacuation notices. Dutcher Creek Road has been upgraded to a Level 2 "Be Set" evacuation notice. Shelters are available at Grants Pass High School and Redwood Christian Church. Please share this info with family and friends immediately."

(Robertson Bridge is one of my cycling loops and it's where we launched the Englands' boat last Saturday.) Hope everything's OK for our trip to Portland on Friday.

We've had a fairly quiet time this last week after our trip to the coast on Monday, judging by the few photos on my camera. The most exciting time was when Jo and I went trail walking the other day. It's not far from here and I've been walking and cycling these trails in previous years, but my memory must be failing me because I thought that one of the trails we did was a circular one that went up the hill at the end of Elk Lane and came back round to where we started. Well, we got lost, didn't we, and ended up on the other side of the hill/mountain, where thankfully we met a guy laying chuckies on the trail. He told us the only way back to our car was to retrace our steps and climb the hill again and go back down the other side. Of course, by now, we'd already been walking for a couple of hours and had used up all of our water. He came to our rescue and gave us a couple of bottles of water he had in his road-roller. This was a huge help, but Jo was still distressed about having to climb up the trail again in the mid-day heat.

Of course, we did eventually make it, but that was the second major dehydration episode for Jo this holiday. I doubt if she'll ever go back trail walking with me again. Anyway, this was the view from the top of the hill:

Scott travelled over to Crescent City for a family commemoration ceremony this weekend, so Lucy took Jo and I round a couple of wineries just outside Medford - and very nice they were too. We had lunch at the second one - Paschal:

So that's all for now. More adventures to follow this week, no doubt.