Whew! That Was Close!

So, on Friday, we came very close to having to evacuate. The winds shifted in our direction and we could see the dark brown smoke getting closer to us. Casey had gone to workout on Friday morning, and as he was heading back towards our house, he could see the flames from the highway.



Luckily, we had plenty of time to pack up more of our important stuff, and we had both cars loaded up and ready to go. Our friends, Chuck and Gaylene came over and took Casey's motorcycles and some of our boxes of pictures back to their house. We were just waiting for the word to leave. There were about 10-12 firetrucks parked down at the school, which is about a mile from us, ready to go if needed.



There was so much air power sent in that several of our friends in town said it looked like a dogfight out our way. They had lots of planes and helicopters flying around all afternoon dropping water and retardant.



Thankfully, later in the afternoon the winds shifted west, away from us, so we never had to evacuate.
Things seemed to have calmed down a bit for now. They seem to have better control of the fires now. The winds have died and the humidity is up, so that's been a big help to the fire crews.
Hopefully things will remain steady. We've sort of unloaded the cars, but still have things packed just in case. We're kind of living out of suitcases and some of our walls look a bit bare, but we want to still be prepared to leave just in case things change again.

If you are interested in keeping track of the fires, go to Enplan and check out the progress. We are close to both the Motion and Moon fires. You can locate the town of Shasta on the map just off HWY 299 and east of Whiskeytown Lake.
So, quite a bit of excitement in our quaint little town, but we're OK!! (just tired of all the smoke)