If you decide to drive south to San Francisco, you need to check the CalFire website for current wildfire conditions. Choose your driving route based on incident locations. It has to be said, you need to give yourself lots of time to drive anywhere in the event you encounter detours.

https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/

Choose your driving route based on incident locations. It has to be said, you need to give yourself lots of time to drive anywhere in the event you encounter detours.

AND since you (OP) isn't familiar with the area in the first place a mistake could take you into even more danger.

Presently Google Maps shows that the fire perimeter has crossed Hwy 199 as of lat night, and Hwy 96 is also impacted. Basically, you can't get there without heading south on 101 at least to Eureka anyways.

At the moment US101 to the south will get you all the way to San Francisco.

You can check the Caltrans website for other traffic situations (such as lane closures and weather) by entering the Highway number. That was the site I relied on to plan my routes to the Bay Area recently.

https://roads.dot.ca.gov/
The phone line is 1-800-427-7623

Wow, glad you all had this one covered and I wonder what the OP did.

Since all the warnings/suggestions . . . its been crickets. OP hasn't posted since the morning of the 12th. It sure would be interesting to know what really hapened . . .

Well we continued our journey to Crater Lake NP re-routing our route. God blessed us with a beautiful clear day there and we were consumed in the beauty, even the sunset! After the two days there we were supposed to go to Timberline at Mt Hood but that was still closed. We went to John Day Fossil Beds instead and then stayed at The Dallas. The Columbia River Gorge on the way to the airport was very smoky so we will have to do that another time. All in all we had a great trip!