(I posted this as three posts on my personal blog, but decided it’d make sense to collect them into a single post here.)

Jenn and I are taking a vacation this week, taking a break from social media and big screens, relaxing and playing board games and such:

Or at least that’s how the week started… then the entire west coast caught on fire.

We (and most of the county) lost power in the afternoon, due to high winds toppling trees onto hundreds of power lines. Including one of our trees, with a plume of smoke in the background:

We continued to play games by lantern:

But as we were about to head to bed, we got level 2 alerts on our phones, warning us to prepare to evacuate, as wildfires spread closer to us:

We packed our bags and prepared to evacuate, but agonized about whether to leave immediately, or wait and see, since our plan was to drive to Mom’s place, three hours north. Meanwhile, a glow of fire a few miles away:

Ultimately we decided that better safe than sorry was a sensible policy, and loaded up both the car and truck, with our dog Rory and the two pet cats Pippin and Paladin in the car, and the six ducklings in the truck, since they couldn’t fend for themselves for more than a day:

The older ducks and feral cats can fend for themselves for as long as needed. The chickens will be fine for a few days, assuming the homestead doesn’t burn.

We hit the road, and arrived at Mom’s place around 03:00, tired but safe.

This morning, we watched the evacuation zones expanding to include our homestead, so we would have had to leave this morning if we hadn’t around midnight:

I’ll follow up later with my usual daily duckling post… a bit less usual this time.