Phil and I went hiking today in the Palo Alto foothills. It was hot and very pretty out. We were looking off from another vantage point and while noticing how smoggy the city is, we spotted some dark plumes of smoke rising from several ridges over. "Must be a grass fire...," I speculated. After we hiked around for another hour or so, we noticed the smoke had become denser and darker, and had also moved quite rapidly due to the winds that were picking up. We found another great viewpoint to watch from and had front row seats while two helicopters flew to a nearby body of water to suck up water and douse the head of the fire. The fire was moving so rapidly , we decided we better head out since it appeared to be heading straight for the road we were taking out. We just missed our route as a police car pulled up in front of us and started setting cones out, blocking the stop light we were at. Bummer. Six fire trucks went blaring past us. A nearby horse boarding facility (or so it looked, since there were about 30 horses there and so many cars that we were guessing each horse belonged to one car) was trying to shuffle all their horses from one side of the road to another while kids on ATVs herded up the animals in their fields. All of this right in the middle of Palo Alto! You could see the Stanford buildings in the background. What an afternoon of entertainment....