Wildfire Smoke and Airport Chaos: My Summer Vacation From Hell

On the first day of my summer vacation, I stepped out of our Chicago hotel into a thick, orange-tinted haze that shrouded the city’s skyline. Almost instantly, my throat started burning.

In what was shaping up to be a summer of relentless travel disruptions, my family had managed to jump, almost literally, out of the frying pan and into the inferno. Like much of Western Europe, Geneva, where we live, had been hit by brutal heat waves, with temperatures soaring to nearly 104 degrees Fahrenheit. As I boarded my flight in mid-July with my husband and children, ages 1 and 4, wildfires were tearing through France, Spain, Portugal and Italy. Upon arriving in the United States, we discovered that large expanses of Canada were in flames, sending clouds of smoke into the United States, engulfing, among other places, Glenn, Mich., a small town on Lake Michigan, where we were headed.

As a travel reporter for The New York Times, I had spent the past year covering the impact on travel of several events: the war in Iran, airport chaos, sky-high prices, heat waves and fires. When it came to my family’s summer vacation, I was reluctant to go far. But the Michigan trip was important because our son had not yet met his grandmother, and the convergence of his first birthday and her 80th seemed like a milestone worth traveling for.

Smoky Skies and Fierce Storms

Smoke blanketed the freeway throughout our three-hour drive to Glenn. When we reached my mother-in-law’s cottage on Lake Michigan, a murky haze blocked the view. We hurried the children inside. Instead of the beach day I’d promised my daughter, air quality forecasts warned of “hazardous” conditions, forcing us to stay indoors.

Reality hit when my husband’s cousins arrived the next day bearing air purifiers. Trapped inside with the windows sealed tight, disappointment turned into agitation. My husband took our anxious daughter on a grocery run to break up the day, while I researched indoor activities.