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-Ryan
Travel
07/06/2012
07/03/2012
We made it through the fires!
I was in San Diego over the June 22nd weekend when the fires started.
My dad and I were speaking at the "Building a Family Legacy" fliming event at Skyline Church.
The air was getting smokey so she relocated with Lincoln and Luci to a friend's house where it was a little better.
I arrived home on Sunday June 24th and didn't feel it was too bad so we all came back home. I worked Monday and Tuesday. The smoke and fires were getting progressivly worse on Tuesday to the point that I was watching the flames and taking pictures from my office.
I drove home a little early and the smoke was getting much worse.
While Laura packed a couple things and got ready to take Luci to my parents house I got on the roof and took one last picture of the apporaching fires.
I stayed behind with Lincoln to pack a few more things. I filled up three watering containers for my chickens and gave them all the food I could, propped open the door to Chicken Fort Knox and hoped for the best.
I went back into the house and five minutes later opened the garage to start loading my truck and it had turned to night. I was so startling and pretty scary. I couldn't see more than two houses away. All of my neighbors were loading their cars and the police were beginning to drive up and down our neighborhood anouncing the mandatory evacuation.
That little dot is the sun!
I finished packing as quickly as possible, grabbed Lincoln and the dogs and headed to my parents house. They were still out of town and I figured it would be safe there as the firefighting helecopters were using their neighborhood's pond to fill their dump tanks to fight the fires.
After I got the kids and Laura to bed I drove up a ridge in their development and watched our city burn. There was a hushed crowd up there trying to make sense of what was taking place around us.
It was just so sad. It was around 10:30PM when my good friend Clint Tafoya texted me that the news was reporting that my parents neighborhood was being put under a mandatory evacuation. I have no photos of that as it was so chaotic trying to call my parents to find out what needed to be saved from their home, pack it all up, wake up Laura and the kids and evacuate.
We made it to my friend Ben's home around 1:00AM and crashed into bed. We woke up a few hours later (regardless of when Lincoln goes to bed his internal alarm clock goes off between 5:30-6:00AM) only to find out our dogs had run away for the third time during the evacuation process! We searched till we found them. One of Laura's brothers let us use his mileage points to purchase flights to CA. I loaded up the family (for what seemed like the millionth time) in the truck and we drove to Denver to catch our flight.
Lincoln enjoyed the flight most :-)
That's where my story will end for today. Thanks for reading and I'll post the rest of the story soon.
God Bless
- Ryan
