California wildfires - from beauty to ashes and destruction in a matter of hours
Our campsite on Calistoga Road, just east of Santa Rosa, California, on Oct. 9, 2016 One year ago this week, we were camping at one of the most beautiful campsites I have ever experienced, in 60 years of enjoying sleeping outdoors. The campsite was on Calistoga Road, northeast of Santa Rosa, the county seat of Sonoma County in northern California. About 175,000 people live in the city, with many others living in the beautiful countryside surrounding it. Sonoma County is well-known across North America for its fabulous vineyards and wineries, and is also home to many other types of farms and a great deal of spectacular scenery. Santa Rosa has been in the news in the past few days for a much different reason. It has lost over 1,000 buildings to the fast-moving Tubbs wildfire, which entered the northern part of the city from the hills that we were camped on a year ago. I fear our campsite, located on a steep hill above a vineyard, and everything in that area has been wiped...