EXOTERIC - Information Worth Sharing: ex·o·ter·ic
-adj
1. Not confined to an inner circle of disciples or initiates.
2. Comprehensible to or suited to the public; popular.
3. Of or relating to the outside; external.

Our family was evacuated last night from our home in Ramona. We had been expecting this. At 2pm we went outside to see this enourmous plume of smoke rising from a nearby fire. The Santa Ana winds were blowing hard all morning and the temperature in the area was nearly 90F. Not a good combination.

Here is a picture of the initial smoke plume of the Witch Creek fire from our neighborhood.

It was almost four years to the day of the Cedar Fire, which was our previous experience with getting evacuated.

We got our RV loaded up and ready. At 8pm the smoke, which had mostly stayed north of us, started to fill the air around us. At 9pm we started off with the RV, my son's car and my wife driving her car. Immediately we got stuck in a huge traffic jam with everyone trying to get out of town. It took us over 4 hours to get out of Ramona and down to La Jolla. That was very frustrating to say the least. The CHP finally started using both lanes of Hwy 67 as southbound and from that point on the traffic was at least moving.

We spent the night in the Sun San Diego parking lot. The campus was officially closed this morning due to the firestorm. We are going to head off to family in the LA area to ride it out until we can get back home.