On a Clear Day You Can See Forever

View of Santa Monica, the whole South Bay and the Palos Verdes Peninsula from Will Roger’s State Park, about 25 miles away. Photo from January 6th, 2025.

But you don’t get a lot of clear days in the City of the Angels. Don’t get me wrong - the smog/haze is SO much better than it was when I was a kid in the 70s. But, when we get dry windy days, the airflow and low humidity clean the air out, making for amazing views. The flip side of that is that it can make for dangerous fire weather. Like the old expression says, “man plans and god laughs.” Our plan was to spend January working on selling our house and doing some “vacation” things that we don’t normally do at home. Unfortunately, that plan got derailed by the awful fires in the LA area that started barely a week into the month. The winds were way worse than usual, and we had days of constant emergency alerts, never knowing where the next fire was going to start and spread. It was nerve wracking. Our house was just outside of the mandatory evacuation areas of the Palisades Fire from the first day, so we stayed packed for evac for 3 days just in case, and then were mandatory evacuated in what felt like a huge rush on the fourth day. We were not allowed home until a week later - luckily, the fire never got closer than about a mile from our house, but it was very hairy for a few days.

The green square is our house and the reddish area is the full area affected by the Palisades Fire. At one point, the fire got all the way to the black line in the top right area near our neighborhood.

In the making lemonade out of lemons approach to life, here are a selection of the amazing views we got to experience because of the clear conditions, then some of the scary fire photos that I took in our general area. We did get to do some of the local touristy/fun LA things before we closed on our house at the end of March - you can see more on that in the I Love LA gallery.

First, super clear views (click on the photos to see notes/locations):

Santa Monica Bluffs, looking South (you can see Palos Verdes)

Santa Monica bluffs looking North, you can see Malibu.

View from old Mulholland Drive (now a hiking trail). You can see the mountains across the valley.

Another view from the hike - you can see the (full) Encino reservoir (water used in firefighting).

View from another hike near our house - you can see some of the skyscrapers in the distance.

View from Will Rogers State Park hike.

Panorama from a hilltop in Will Rogers State Park.

Will Rogers State Park hiking path.

Pretty trees, unfortunately this area burned later that week.

Historic Will Rogers house. Burned down 2 days later :-(.

And, here’s the fire progression in our area….

Mid-day 1/10/2025 - view from a nearby park. Plumes getting close to our area.

5pm ish 1/10/2025 - Hmmm - plumes getting redder and bigger. View from area restaurant.

YIKES - 7pm 1/10/2025 - EVACUATE NOW. View from outside our house.

9pm ish - View of same plumes from near bro’s house.

Again looking for any silver linings - during our mandatory evacuation, we camped out at my brother’s house and got to spend a lot of quality time with their new ginormous Doberman pincher. He is a 3 year old rescue, a real sweetheart, but probably 30% bigger than your average dobie. And he has no idea. Here he is playing tug with my brother and then falling asleep with one of his stuffies. ♥️