NORTH COUNTY -- They have shelter, food, water and even people to pray for them.

But what the thousands of people living in shelters in San Diego County today do not have is peace of mind.

"The waiting," said John Hansche of Valley Center. "The waiting is the hardest part."

Waiting was the difficult task of families and residents temporarily living in high school auditoriums and other shelters. Others camped in their cars or took shelter in hotel rooms. All had stories to tell as they waited for word that they could go home.

'Hope for the best'

Hansche, his family and their six dogs left Valley Center on Monday morning and headed to Escondido High School, where he fought Santa Ana winds to pitch five tents on the football field of Wilson Stadium.

Living in tents made the evacuation feel a little like camping for the family, Hansche said, but nothing could be done for the anxiety that never was far from his mind.

"There's not a lot to do, really," he said. "Sit here and worry, like all the rest, and hope for the best."

Red Cross workers and other volunteers do what they can to comfort evacuees, but they can't answer the one question on many people's minds: Is my house OK?

Antonio Melchor lives in a mobile home near the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park with his wife, three children, two dogs and six 3-month-old puppies. He packed everyone up and evacuated to the school after an officer knocked on his door at 8 p.m. Sunday telling him to get out.

"I think it is lost," he said as his children played with the puppies. Melchor, who moved from Mexico 20 years ago, said he's not sure where he will go.

Farming students herd their charges

In the corner of the same school shelter, 16-year-old Samantha Gibson led a team of Future Farmers of America students looking after horses and other large animals brought in by evacuees. After taking a quick tally, she said the student club has taken in 39 horses, 17 goats, three chickens and other animals. Students built five additional pens at their stables for the emergency, and Gibson said they have plenty of room for more animals.

Angelo and Linda Moulios left their three horses at the stables while they slept in their motor home parked at the school.

"They did very well here," Linda said as she came to retrieve the horses after hearing the road to their home was open. "They took such great care of them." As the couple led their horses away, Angelo said he would keep his trailer hitched to his vehicle, just in case.

Outside the school gym, children laughed through their air-filter face masks at Lucas the Clown, who had driven from Tijuana to entertain children with a magic show in Spanish. Inside, three Mormon elders talked to evacuees and about 20 members of Set Free North County Ministry held hands and prayed for people on cots.

'We thought it was going to reach us'

On the coast, New Song Community Church in Oceanside opened its doors to evacuees including Fallbrook resident Rosina Rivera, 35.

Like many people countywide, Rivera spent much of Monday watching television for wildfire updates, but then began gathering important papers and clothes after receiving a reverse 911 call notifying her that she and her family had to evacuate.

"It (the fire) was so near, we could see flames and really thick smoke," she said. "We thought it was going to reach us because traffic was so slow."

The family first went to a Wal-Mart parking lot in Oceanside with plans to sleep in its van, but left three hours later after learning about New Song's shelter, which provided a place to sleep and food and clothes for the children. It also included some of the comforts of a home, including toys, puzzles and sofas set in front of a television set airing cartoons. Rivera's youngest daughter held a toy phone up to her ear as she walked in the area near her mother around noon Tuesday at the shelter.

"We're having a good time here," she said. "This is a better place for us to stay."

Rivera said she did not know if her family's home survived the fire, and that it will be "really hard if we lose everything." The most important thing, though, was making sure her family was safe, she said.

'A step up from camping'

Fallbrook residents Jim and Brenda Pickel first learned about the fire as they drove home Sunday night after seeing "Jersey Boys" in San Diego with relatives from South Carolina. Jim said they passed through plumes of smoke "like I'd never seen before."

From their home in the Brook Hills community in southern Fallbrook the next day, the Pickels could see a fire in the distance. Throughout the day, it seemed to get closer and closer.

Eventually, a neighbor received a reverse 911 call to evacuate, and the Pickels heard about the evacuation orders on the television news.

The couple decided to leave about 4 p.m., mostly because Jim Pickel's mother is 86 and his sister has some respiratory problems, they said.

The Pickels and their relatives made it to Oceanside, where they ate at In-N-Out and planned to spend the night in their car in the parking lot of a 24 Hour Fitness before learning about a shelter at El Camino High School.

"They bent over backwards to make it super comfortable," Brenda said. "It's definitely a step up from camping."

'Things you can't replace'

Back in Escondido, about a dozen recreational vehicles sat in the Home Depot parking lot at 1475 E. Valley Parkway, where evacuees had been directed by sheriff's deputies in Valley Center.

Stacy Burke of Valley Center and her mother Karen Boyle passed their time sitting on beach chairs and tending to their dogs and sheep. Having lost the family home to a fire in 1979, Burke said she knows what to save in an evacuation.

"I don't necessarily take the china and silverware," she said. "I take pictures and things you can't replace."

Christine Brandenberg and her friend Jeanette Westerlund left Valley Center early Tuesday morning and spent much of the day waiting in the Home Depot parking lot. Like Burke and Boyle, neither knew about the Escondido High shelter a few miles away.

Brandenberg said they were passing the time listening to the radio for news about Valley Center while trying to stay calm. As smoke grew thicker and ashes began to fall in midafternoon, the women wondered if they should evacuate again.

"It just started getting really smoky right now," Brandenberg said, looking up anxiously.

'We would be like cattle'

Susan Hughey and her family slept in their vehicles in the parking lot of a Fallbrook grocery store Monday night.

With fires raging nearby late Monday, the Hugheys were fleeing their home -- and so was everyone else in Fallbrook. Their plan was to evacuate west on Ammunition Road through Camp Pendleton. But with the traffic on Mission Road moving south an inch at a time, Hughey said, she was worried. So the family steered their two vehicles into the relatively uncongested Albertsons parking lot near the intersection of the two roads.

"If the fire shifted and we were all there in a line, we would be like cattle," Hughey said. "There was nowhere to go."

It was 9:45 a.m. Tuesday. Hughey and her daughter were again inching forward in the SUV, this time at the Shell gas station off Temecula Parkway, where about 25 vehicles were waiting for about 20 pumps. Her husband and son were waiting for another pump. They had just returned from Fallbrook, where they found their house undamaged.

The sky above was blue, but there was a gray haze to the south, and the faint smell of ash was everywhere. Light but sudden gusts snapped around as more cars waited to turn onto the tarmac.

"We're hoping things will subside," Hughey said.

Hands clutch simple treasures

In a disaster, it's easy to tell what people value. Just look at what they're holding in their hands.

Evacuees at the Del Mar Fairgrounds on Tuesday were clutching a variety of objects, from the mundane to the exotic. Before fleeing their homes, they had to make rapid choices about what to throw in the car. Some grabbed photographs, clothing or paintings. Others rounded up pets.

For Essence Lorenz, a 35-year-old from Rancho Bernardo, the must-take item was a spiral-bound notebook where she has long scribbled down ideas for inventions, clothing designs, and entrepreneurial advice from her favorite television personalities.

While watching over her son at the Del Mar Fairgrounds shelter, Lorenz -- an aspiring inventor and self-described "soon-to-be million-dollar mommy" -- kept the notebook tucked securely beneath her arm.

"If I'd lost this -- oh, Lord -- I would have had to remember everything I've written," she said.

Sifting through donated clothing nearby, Fallbrook resident Vickie Harjo, 54, showed off the miniature cross around her quiet Chihuahua's tiny neck. She came to the fairgrounds after her neighborhood, the Valley Oaks Mobile Ranch, was cleared out.

"God has his reasons," Harjo said. "If my home is burned down, I know He'll provide."

No room at the shelter

Chris Kleppe, who lives off Cole Grade Road in Valley Center, had planned to be at his job at a tire distribution center in Escondido by 6 a.m., but held back after he called the warehouse and got no answer. By dawn, when the evacuation call came, he and his wife were already wide awake.

Chris and Pam Kleppe loaded up the small bed of their white Suzuki Vitara with a cedar chest they had filled with letters and other keepsakes. Their first stop, around 6:30 a.m., was a temporary shelter at Valley Center High School, but it was full. They headed toward Interstate 15.

At a gas station on Highway 76, a law enforcement officer advised them to go north, through the smoke, toward Temecula. They saw flames on a hillside near the Mission Road exit, and then more smoke, and then blue sky when they climbed out of the valley and toward Rainbow.

The couple stopped at an AM/PM gas station at Temecula Parkway to fill up the Vitara around 10 a.m. The cedar chest and other belongings were covered with blankets and lashed down with elastic shock cords.

They had brought their dog and cat, too.

"We've got our turtle in a little shoebox," Chris Kleppe added.

Midnight flight

In the hours before dawn on Tuesday, Ray Roman gathered up a few belongings from his house and drove north with his friend Greg Ciuffredo. Both live near the perimeter of the Witch Creek fire, which has spread westward from Ramona to threaten Roman's and other homes in southern Escondido and thousands more in Poway, where Ciuffredo lives.

The two slept for a few hours at the Best Western motel on Jefferson Avenue in Temecula. Shortly after 10 a.m. they emerged from their room, arms full of pillows and luggage. They had woken up and tried to make reservations for another night but found the motel was already full. They wondered whether they should try to find another nearby motel or drive back to Roman's place in Escondido.

"We're going to eat," Ciuffredo said.

"To Denny's," Roman added.

The parking lot at the Best Western was full, but cars continued to lumber in -- and out again as motel staff told one person after the next that there were no more rooms. It was 10:45 a.m.

Overflow

Gloria Garcia sat in a chair on the sunny second-floor balcony of the Best Western motel in Temecula and looked on as her daughter Shelly Barnett stood by, cell phone pressed to her ear for an update on their home in Rainbow. Garcia and her husband had stayed at the motel Monday night. They planned to stay again Tuesday, but he had driven back to Rainbow to check for damage. There wasn't any, but the plant nursery across the street from the Garcias' house was ablaze, he told his daughter.

Eight others in their extended family had stayed in a room downstairs and in a camper across the street. Pam Gloady and her daughter Kayla, also members of the Garcias' extended family who live in the Fallbrook area, had arrived Monday evening but found no rooms. They and Gloady's sister had driven to Lake Elsinore, arriving just in time to take the last two rooms, Gloady said.

Gloady and Kayla walked out of the second-floor room. They stood there, chatted briefly with a visitor, and then began to mull over the day ahead. One of them suggested The Promenade shopping center in town. Another wondered whether Mulligan's Family Fun Center would be open.

Staff writers Gary Warth, Scott Marshall, Chris Bagley and Craig TenBroeck contributed to this story.