COVID and wildfires gave us an education instead of a vacation. We’ll never be the same.

 

The last time we tried for a two-week vacation, in 1993, a Hurricane Emily evacuation forced us to leave after six days. Nearly three decades later, we decided to try again. We left early this time, too, after close encounters with COVID-19 and wildfires.

This is not a first-world rant against the inconvenience of climate change and a virus we can’t seem to beat. Rather, it’s a look at lessons learned and not learned – about the folly of betting against nature, science and, in particular, the frightening fires that seem remote on the East Coast but often dictate life in the West. It’s about the friction between a husband and wife with different tolerances for masking, crowds and indoor vs. outdoor dining, as they traveled through a patchwork of pandemic regulations in three states.

And it’s about a family that keeps trying against the odds to celebrate, together in person, two birthdays four days apart in August – prime hurricane and wildfire season and, in 2020 and 2021, prime COVID season as well.

Smoke and COVID on Day One

We should have known from the start that the trip was going to be problematic. The weather app on my phone showed a solid gray sky in Seattle, our first destination, and the forecast was “Smoke.” Those were firsts in my East Coast experience. Friends had arranged a dinner out on our first night. But the restaurant had a COVID outbreak and was closed all three nights we were there.

Our next adventure was a road trip down the Oregon coast, staying in five towns over five nights. We were in Cannon Beach four days after Gov. Kate Brown reinstated a mask mandate for indoor gatherings. There were posters on store doors all over town announcing the mandate. And, in what could be interpreted as simple fact or passive aggression, they offered Brown’s office number and told people with questions to call her.

 

Each town brought new reasons to study COVID responses. In Newport, a motel clerk was behind plastic but not masked (fine with me, but not my husband). In Fortuna, motel clerks were masked and so was our waiter at a brewery where we ate outdoors. The inevitable happened at a Bandon bakery, as we waited with a dozen others to order or pick up breakfast: An unmasked young man walked in, an employee offered him a mask, he looked annoyed and he stalked back out the door.

Our first stop in California was Crescent City in Del Norte County, the hottest COVID hotspot on the West Coast. We picked a table far from other diners in a large airy restaurant, and my husband noted to our waiter that he was unmasked. The adorable teenager offered to wear one, but he also reminded us of what we had forgotten: We were no longer in Oregon, so there was no mandate.

Halfway through our meal, we heard an older server tell our waiter that a party of 14 was expected in 15 minutes. Unnerved by the prospect of 14 unmasked strangers at tables the staff was pushing together right next to ours, we gulped a few last bites, paid up and fled.

A second try for Lake Tahoe

Lake Tahoe has been on my bucket list for years, thanks to raves from friends and family. Last year we rented a house there, but COVID forced us to cancel. This year we rented the same house and crossed our fingers. But as we started a 6.5-hour drive, the fire danger snapped into focus. We saw smoke haze for most of the trip. In the parking lot of a Tahoe City supermarket, we slapped on our COVID masks to filter out the smoky air. At the rental house, two big cinders flew by my face as I stepped onto the driveway. Welcome to Tahoe.

 

I immediately started following @CAL_FIRE on Twitter and checking several times a day on the Caldor Fire, which had destroyed nearly 500 homes and commercial buildings: 98,000 acres and 0% contained. 106,000 and 5% contained. The air quality was hazardous. Then very unhealthy. Then back to hazardous. We had lists of best walks, hikes and places to see sunsets, but we couldn’t go outside. Government agencies advised everyone to stay inside and limit activities. The haze was so thick that there was nothing to see, anyway.

The saving grace was that our sons were coming. One of them was flying into Reno, Nevada, on Aug. 23, the day before his birthday. But wildfire smoke diverted the flight to San Francisco, and then it was canceled. He returned home to Los Angeles the same night. His older brother, driving from Salt Lake City, had been waiting in Reno to pick him up. He continued on to Tahoe alone.

 

When the Tahoe air improved to simply “unhealthy,” my first reaction was wow, that’s great. My second was, it’s actually not great when “unhealthy” seems great. “I don’t think it’s healthy to be here,” I told my husband late Monday night. We ended up leaving two days early, on Wednesday. Our Reno-Denver flight was canceled early that morning for visibility reasons, but the airline rebooked us. We walked in our front door in Washington, D.C., about 2 a.m.

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Our decision was prescient. By last Tuesday, as it advanced toward Tahoe and closed Reno schools, the Caldor Fire was the No. 1 priority for national firefighting resources. On Wednesday, as we drove away, Tahoe City and South Lake Tahoe had the worst air pollution in the nation. By Thursday, Tahoe basin evacuations had started and tourists were being asked to stay home. By Friday, the fire had grown to 225 square miles and weather conditions were getting worse. On Saturday, a fire that began 70 miles from Lake Tahoe on Aug. 14 was about 8 miles away.

 

This was not quite the trip we had planned. We did reunite with friends in Seattle, and the Oregon coast did live up to its spectacular billing, as did the redwoods. As far as I know, we avoided catching plague from chipmunks at Lake Tahoe. And so far, we are coronavirus-free. But our Pacific Northwest sojourn was not so much an escape as an immersion in two clear and present dangers: COVID and climate change.

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The active life we’ve avoided for so long at home exposed us to more COVID risk on the road and more diverse views on how and whether to reduce risk. The challenges of figuring out appropriate restrictions and precautions were never more clear. As for climate change, as an East Coast lifer, I am familiar with its role in making hurricanes more destructive, but until now I could only imagine its impact in the increasingly dry and hot West. This firsthand experience with drought and fire made the climate crisis real and urgent, and our strange, sobering “vacation” unforgettable.

Jill Lawrence is the commentary editor of USA TODAY and author of “The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock.