Bay Area in Smoke

We went to San Francisco bay area last week - not the best time to go there due to smoke from prolonged forest fire  "camp fire" at Paradise CA. The area was filled with smoke, and local schools and universities were closed. As we landed at SFO, we could see smoke in nearby hills, and the visibility was really bad, especially near the shore and over the water. 

We had to make the best of the situation.

The treasurer island is in the middle of the bay, accessible via bay bridge. It does not have much to offer, but is a good location to view bay bridge, SF downtown skyline and golden gate bridge. On that sunny day, the bay bridge and the SF downtown were behind the thin veil of smoke! We could barely see the golden gate bridge and the cameras could not capture it. Walking along the McLaughlin east seashore, the view did not improve much.

Bay bridge and SF downtown viewed from treasurer island.

 A pier at McLaughlin seashore State Park @ 3pm on the sunny afternoon

A grey heron by McLaughlin Seashore

Bay bridge in rain

The smoke made the scenes everywhere bleak. The rundown highways, and scattered tents of homeless people at some local street intersections, and even on the patios of some stores, made it more bleak. We actually did get the first hand impact of the despair of some of those people.  I saw a SUV at McLaughlin east seashore state park's parking lot with shattered window and broken glasses. Our rental car was broken in, the next day on the busy Costco parking lot at Berkeley during a 30 minute span we went in and out. 911 dispatcher told us that police won't come to take a look in 2 hours because there were too many such petty crimes. We had to file our incident report online, and that was the end of it.

The smoke disappeared when it rained; homeless situation in the richest state in the country actually is getting worse and worse over the years!

Our rental car was broken in by thief at Berkeley Costco parking lot