Wheeler Gorge / Ojai

Smoke from late afternoon campfires starting throughout the full campground. 

We arrived at 9:30 Friday night and our reserved spot, #066, we discovered was essentially a parking spot in another groups much larger combined campsite area. I should’ve assumed something was up when the host saw our reservation and replied in a hesitant mumble of acknowledgement. 

We drove back to the host and found out about the first-come-first-serve sites and since we were some of the first arrivals for the weekend we took advantage of #020 pictured here.  

We got lucky the campsite also had perfect trees for a hammock. In fact the site to the right of this photo was occupied by 2 guys who showed up and excusively slept in their hammocks and never set up a tent thanks to all the trees. 

Saturday afternoon. In some areas of the campground, flames did make it in and burned patches of trees. The problem at hand now is mud slides that have eliminated nearby trails and extra campsites up the hill.

Right after we made breakfast a friendly man drove up to us and told us about opening day for the visitor center. Live animals like this owl, a hawk , snakes and critters were on exhibit. We checked it out and talked to a few Ojai locals about the impact of the Thomas fire, how the center and campgrounds were miraculously saved by setting “back-fires” to surround the area and fight back the approaching wildfire. There was an REI CoOp booth and we had what I’d guess was a record breaking Jenga game (look how high that tower is!) and each won some REI steel cups. 

We didn’t do much, which was why we came camping. We drove into the outskirts of the town in order to get cell service for a few minutes for something and when we came back to our site we just read and laid around. It was perfect. 

Weather was as good as it could get for camping - 80 during the peak of the day and in the mid-50s at night.