Excitement on our way to Hearst Castle

Well, any of you who know much about California have surely heard of Hearst Castle. It is this spectacular mansion (castle) built by William Randolph Hearst who was this huge newspaper publishing guy back in the 20's and 30's. It is located over on the coast near Morro Bay. Sari's class went there for their field trip this year and I got invited to go as a chaperone. So after much work I was able to secure a babysitter and get my schedule cleared so I could spend the day with Sari at Hearst Castle. We met at the school at 5:30 in the morning and finally got on the road around 6am. All of the 5th grade classes went so we were in 3 different chartered buses. We were about half way there and our bus driver pulled the bus over to the side of the freeway. We were in the lead and had just merged onto a new freeway so we thought she was just waiting for the other buses to catch up. After a minute she merged back onto the freeway and about 30 seconds later she pulled back off to the side of the road again. She immediately stepped up and told us she wanted us all to get off of the bus and follow the teacher to a road sign a few hundred feet away from the bus. We then noticed that there was big black clouds of smoke billowing up from the back of the bus. The kids all remained very calm and we were able to get off of the bus and down the freeway to the road sign. It was then that we turned around and saw the flames coming from under the bus. Indeed, our bus had caught fire while we were driving down the highway. Luckily we had just come into a town and so within about 2 minutes the highway patrol and the fire department had already responded and they were able to quickly put out the fire. The bus driver and the firemen were able to get all of our belongings off of the bus. Luckily, there were a few children who hadn't been able to go on the trip so we had extra seats on the two remaining buses, enough so that we were able to all fit on the other two buses once we split up. The whole incident only put us about 45 minutes behind schedule and Hearst Castle was able to split our touring groups up so we were all able to get through the tours and were able to get back on schedule. After the Hearst Castle tours we were able to take the kids on a tour of Cal Poly, a well known 4 year college located in San Luis Obispo. Sari found this especially enjoyable because it is very close to Cuesta College where Craig went through nursing school which is also in San Luis Obispo. We got back to the Visalia about 7:30 that night without further incident. It was funny while we were all standing on the side of the road watching the firemen work on the bus the only thing the kids were talking about was their games, cd's, mp3 players, etc. that they had left on the bus. No mention at all how lucky we were that we all got off of the bus without any problems and that no one was injured at all. Funny what matters most to 11 year olds. Unfortunately, I left my camera on the bus and so I was unable to take pictures of the fire or of Hearst Castle. We were unable to get to our belongings until after Hearst Castle when we finally had time to sort things out, :(