Tuesday October 11th 2016

It was another cool morning followed by a mid 70s day. Today was a travel day to Lake Louisa State Park in Clermont FL. I got started at about 10AM this morning. This seems to be my natural unhurried departure time. I need to get up earlier to leave before 10 and there is a lot of sitting around to leave later.

Site 10 at Lake Louisa State Park.

The trip south on I-75 was uneventful. Traffic was heavy all the way down. I-75 seems to be much more utilized than I-95 on the eastern side of the state. I arrived at Lake Louisa State Park around 1:30. The campground has many vacancies until the weekend. Many of the sites that are listed as occupied are also empty. The park was evacuated during the hurricane and only re-opened Monday. My guess is many of the evacuees won’t return. Despite the apparent available sites, I was only able to book a site until Friday.

I am still west of Orlando. The majority of the storm damage is east and north of Orlando. The news is still reporting a great number of tree issues and power outages in those areas. One sign that the area is recovering is the resumption of school. The last of the counties to resume regular classes will do so tomorrow. I haven’t seen any signs of hurricane damage in this area.

A little bit of sunshine on a cloudy day.

One of my goals in coming to the state park was to get back into nature. I’ve been staying in RV Resorts to much lately. Most of the time the term RV Resort is a synonym for parking lot or trailer park. So far I’ve walked around the campground and checked out a couple of the fishing docks. With the exception of a couple of lily pads, I haven’t seen anything remarkable. I’ve heard birds, but I haven’t seen any. As far as gators go, I’m satisfied with the warning signs. The real ones can stay wherever they are.

Over the next couple of days I will explore the park. There are a number of hiking and biking trails. With any luck, I’ll see some wildlife. I also need to figure out my next camp site. I’m guessing it will be back in an RV Resort, so I really need to get my nature fix quickly.

Monday October 10th 2016

It’s a good thing I’m heading south, because the temperature in middle Georgia is dropping. This morning it was in the high 40s. When I stopped this afternoon at the Florida Georgia boarder, about 180 miles south, it had reached the mid 70s. The forecast is for another couple of days of cooler than normal temperatures.

Site 1 at the Eagle Roost RV resort.

One of the things that I am missing is the New England fall. This mornings low temperatures were my first real indicator that the season is changing. I haven’t seen any foliage or other traditional northern fall indicators. Curiously, the campground I’m staying at has an artificial Christmas tree decorated with fall objects like pumpkins, dried corn and hay. It was strange to see, but surprisingly decorative and pretty.

I got started this morning at about 10am. The coastal evacuees were all staying at least another day. Savannah and the low country are still not allowing residents to return. I hope they all get home soon and don’t have significant damage.

The drive south on I75 was hectic. The road is in good condition, but the traffic volume was very high. Similar to the north bound stretch, I played hopscotch with the trucks. It gets complicated when you run up on a vehicle going slower than the me or the trucks. Competition for the passing lanes with the trucks requires patience.

The Georgia National Fair grounds were a bustle of activity when I went by in late morning. Cars were backed up on the exit ramp all the way to the parking fields across the highway. I’m glad I didn’t attempt to go to the fair over the weekend. If it’s so busy on a Monday morning, it must have been a real zoo over the weekend.

I’m stopped for the night at the Eagle Roost RV Resort about 5 miles north of the Florida Georgia boarder. It is an older campground with pull through site under trees heavy with Spanish moss. It’s very pretty, but I wouldn’t want to be here in a strong wind.

Sunday October 9th 2016

A front went through overnight cooling the temperatures down. It was in the low 60s to start the day. The temperature topped out in the 80s with lots of sunshine.

I finally got motivated to do some touring in the area. Today I drove south about 50 miles to Robins Air Force Base and the Museum of Aviation. This is the third museum of military equipment I’ve visited in a little more than a week. While I always enjoy these museums, it probably would be more enjoyable if I spread out the visits a little more.

The Museum of Aviation has aircraft and exhibits in four buildings and the surrounding grounds. The outdoor displays are the bigger aircraft and a few smaller ones waiting for restoration. One of the buildings has some restoration work on a B-17 and other aircraft taking place in between other exhibits.

Robins AFB has been a logistics and maintenance facility since it was first built during World War II. The Museum of Aviation is influenced by that history. Many of the displays show aircraft being serviced with various internal parts visible. Test equipment and support devices like power carts and bomb trailers get featured prominently in the exhibits. It provides a unique flavor to the museum’s narrative.

A B-1B Lancer in front of the main entrance sets the stage for the exhibits to follow

A-10A Thunderbolt II often called the Warthog

Main entrance hall of the Eagle building as seen from the second level. The F-15A Eagle dominates the hall. Note the open panel at the front showing inner mechanisms. This is one of the common characteristics of many of the exhibits.

B-52D Stratofortress on display outside. This is the second B-52 I’ve seen on display. The first was last Sunday at the Battleship Alabama park.

C-124C Globemaster II transport used from 1950 until the mid 1970s.

B-29B Superfortress squeezed into the Scott hanger.

F-16A Falcon in Thunderbird paint scheme.

F-111E Ardvark fighter bomber

SR-71A Blackbird high altitude observation plane.

Tomorrow I plan to leave  Middle Georgia in the direction of Florida.  I may stop for an additional night in Georgia.  I’m not in any rush.  There are still many people evacuated from the coastal communities.

Saturday October 8th 2016

It was a sunny day in the high 80s with lots of wind. Despite my intent to get out and see the area today, I spent the day at my RV home.

Since I bought groceries yesterday, I had plenty of goodies to go with my morning coffee. I enjoyed a cinnamon roll with a couple of cups of coffee for breakfast. Slowly sipping coffee, catching up on my Internet reading and watching various things on TV had the morning over in no time. Switching gears and getting out of the campground didn’t happen. I spent the day watching college football games in tropical storm level rain. Something about the added dimension of bad weather makes the games more entertaining.

Avian residents of the park

On my late afternoon walk around the campground I noticed that a few of the evacuees have departed. I hope they are successful getting home and finding everything in good condition. Most of the people in this park have evacuated from the Savannah GA area or the South Carolina low country just to the north of Savannah.

The geese are getting fed.

The TV news reports that many areas of Savannah are still closed as they work to make it safe. Tybee Island the barrier island between Savannah and the Atlantic may not be accessible for a couple of days. The Hilton Head Island area just to the north of Savannah is still evacuated. The Beaufort SC area a little further north is still reported to have many flooded areas. All of these locations are significant to some of my neighbors. They are anxious for detailed damage reports and to get home.

Based on the checking I’ve done on the Internet, my plans for the rest of the month should be OK if I stay away from the coast. The Orlando area of Florida is recovering quickly from the down trees and power lines they experienced. Even the Florida coast from Titusville south should recover relatively quickly. From there north it sounds like there is significant damage to roads and infrastructure that will take time to fix.

Friday October 7th 2016

It was a cloudy and relatively cool day in middle Georgia with an occasional brief shower. For the second day in a row, I got caught up watching the hurricane Matthew coverage on TV.

Luckily the storm has stayed off shore so the extent of the damage has been less than feared. Watching the reports from areas I am familiar with and listening to the speculation on damage had a strange attraction. I think I was subconsciously hunkered down waiting for the storm to pass rather than being active 250 to 400 miles from the storms location off the Florida coast.

Safari field sites at the Forsyth KOA.

All of the damage reports and power outage reports have led me to the conclusion that I need to stay away from the Atlantic coast for the next couple of weeks at a minimum. I had originally planned to finish up in the Jacksonville area then move on to Orlando for the EPCOT Food and Wine Festival. Reversing that plan will allow the Jacksonville area time to get cleaned up. The down side is that it will involve more travel miles. I have reservations in the Fort Myers area in the middle of November. It appears I am destine to crisscross the state of Florida several times this fall/winter.

Late this afternoon I pulled myself away from the TV and the computer to make a run for groceries. I was down to the last leftovers or frozen dinners for meals. The Super Walmart at the next Interstate exit fit the replenishment requirement. I now have enough food for a few more days should I decide to continue to watch TV instead of exploring the area.

My current plan is to get out and see the area over the next couple of days. The aviation museum at Robins AFB is a few miles the other side of Macon and the Georgia National Fair is just a little further down the road. If I hadn’t been to two aviation museums in the last week, I’d be rushing to Robins AFB, but I’m a little bit in overload mode. As for the Fair, it has been a long time since I’ve been to one. So maybe …

Thursday October 6th 2016

The day started cloudy and cool. My energy level was similarly low. By afternoon the sun was out and the temperature reached the low 80s, but my enthusiasm for activity never recovered.

Pond at the Forsyth KOA.

This area of middle Georgia, as it is known, received more evacuees today. Interstate 16 that connects Savannah with Macon GA had the east bound lanes reversed for the first 100 miles. This doubles the number of cars the road can support. My location just a little north of Macon felt the impact of all the traffic. Interstate 75 in front of the campground had completely stopped traffic this afternoon when I started to head out for groceries. I returned to my RV home until tomorrow.

I spent most of the day keeping track of Hurricane Matthew on the TV. DirecTV has created a special channel that rotates between the storm coverage of a number of different TV stations from Fort Lauderdale FL north to Charleston SC. It’s interesting to see the live shots of the storm preparation and the early parts of the storm. All of the TV stations are focused on getting people to obey the evacuation orders. Several Florida stations delivered similar stories about the expected storm surge followed by interviews with someone who is going to ignore the risk and stay on the barrier island. If the waters going to be over your head, why wouldn’t you leave?

The Orlando TV station reported that all of the Theme parks closed at 5PM and will remain closed tomorrow. Disney also evacuated the Fort Wilderness Campground yesterday. There is great concern that RVs, mobile homes and other manufactured housing will not survive hurricane force winds. The Orlando area has shelters setup primarily for residents of mobile home parks. I’m happy to be in middle Georgia away from all the action.

If this storm does as much damage as they are talking about, I don’t know how soon I’ll get back to Florida. I may need to make some new plans over the weekend as the nature of the storm damage becomes clear.

Wednesday October 5th 2016

I got underway at 9:30 this morning. It was a bright and sunny day with a gusty wind. The wind was not related to the impending hurricane, but it made travel a two hands on the steering wheel task.

This was my first experience with Interstate 75 through Georgia. It was a fine three lane road with a good surface. One thing I really notice is the smoothness of the road surface. Every bump, such as concrete road joints, get transmitted through out the motorhome. On the down side, the scenery is punctuated by more billboards than you could possibly read. In many areas both sides of the highway have advertisements every few hundred yards.

Site 128 at the Forsyth Georgia KOA. Sites in this area are very close. The fireplace is a potbelly stove like contraption.

I am about 180 miles north of Florida and about the same distance from the coast. This is probably much further than I needed to move to get out of the way of the storm, but once I decided to run I wanted to be safe from any variation in the storms path. This campground is full with others getting away from the storm’s path. When I arrived around 1:30 there were four rigs in front of me at check in. I needed to wait in the road for space to open up in the campground driveway before I could register.

Traffic on the way north was heavy. I don’t think it was caused by the storm, just normal week day traffic. The evening news indicated that other highways coming directly from the coast, like Interstate 16 from Savannah, were clogged by evacuees. On I-75 the one give away that a storm was about to hit in Florida was the south bound traffic. Every few minutes a group of Electric Company trucks or tree cutting trucks could be seen heading south to support the post storm cleanup.

I plan to spend the weekend here. Where I go from here is dependent on the path of the storm, the damage it does and my mood. I have things I want to do in Florida, but not a set time line. Getting into the middle of the aftermath of the storm or even the storm itself should it loop as currently forecast is not something I want to do.

Tuesday October 4th 2016

After a busy few days in tourist and travel mode I spent the day relaxing at home. My focus was on figuring out what’s next and catching up on domestic tasks.

Site 3 at the Lake City Campground.

I did the laundry at the reasonable price of $1.50 per load for the washer and dryer. The laundry is also conveniently located across the road from my site. This means I didn’t have to hang around and wait for the machines to finish. It was load up the washer come back in 35 minutes to load up the dryer, come back in another 45 minutes to fold and bring stuff home. The laundry wasn’t busy so this was very easy.

The bigger task was to figure out how to deal with the impending hurricane Matthew. It was clear yesterday that I going any closer to the coast than my current 100 miles was not a dumb idea. The question was do I stay here or run. This area is likely to get heavy rain and this site is not the best for staying dry. That means I need to “run”.

Watching the predicted track of the storm as it changes every 6 hours, it was clear that anywhere east or south of here was in the path of the storm. I just came from the west, so I could backtrack. Any of the RV parks west of Tallahassee were an option. I just wasn’t feeling it.

I am currently camped just east of Interstate 75. The whole state of Georgia is just up the road. I decided to head north toward Atlanta. There are a number of things I want to tour at sometime in between here and there. This seems like a good opportunity.

With the decision made, finding a place to stay through the weekend proved a little difficult. There are plenty of campgrounds, but as I started to check for reservations I found a few with no available space. This is the Columbus Day holiday weekend for some people so that could be a contributing factor. Other people escaping the storm may have similar ideas and the Georgia National Fair starts on Thursday in Perry GA which is right in the middle of my target area.

I made a reservation at the KOA in Forsyth GA for Wednesday thru Monday. It is a little further north than I intended to run but has a number of things to do with in a reasonable distance. Now all I have to do is hope the hurricane doesn’t decide to follow me.

Monday October 3rd 2016

I got underway toward the east about ten this morning. I traveled about 300 miles across Florida and still have a little over 100 to go. I’ve stopped for a couple of nights at the Lake City Campground in, you guessed it, Lake City Florida.

My st.op for a couple of nights

When I left this morning, hurricane Matthew was projected to stay in the Atlantic east of Florida. This evening the east side of the Florida peninsula is in the projected path. I’m going to stay here until Wednesday. Hopefully the forecast path of the storm will be known by then. I will either turn north into Georgia on I-75 or reverse direction toward Tallahassee if the storm is still heading for the east coast of Florida. The minimal hurricane or tropical storm Hermine at the beginning of September was bad enough. I don’t want to be near at category 2 of 3 hurricane.

The trip across the top of Florida is long. The terrain is very hilly and the area is heavily forested. It continues to remind me more of other parts of the country than the Florida I am familiar with. I played a lot of hopscotch with the trucks today. I run the cruise control at 64 or 65 mph which is slower than the trucks want to travel, but on the hills I can maintain speed and they can’t. It requires a little more attention when I’m side by side with one of the trucks. I don’t want to get sucked to close.

One good thing about the trip east is that I’m back in the eastern time zone. The central time zone was keeping me confused. I only manually changed a few of my clocks and a couple of devices changed automatically. That combined with TV prime time being an hour earlier really kept me guessing. When I looked at a time display, I had to know if the clock was changed before I had a clue what time it was. If I hadn’t known I was returning to the eastern time zone I would have made an effort to make sure all 12 plus time display devices were set to the same time zone.

Sunday October 2nd 2016

Today I took a day trip 70 miles west to the USS Alabama Battleship park  in Mobile Alabama. The park is home to the World War II era battleship Alabama, the submarine USS Drum and many other pieces of military hardware from the civil war through the current era.

USS Alabama on display behind the gift shop.

The USS Alabama (BB-60) is the fourth ship in the South Dakota class of battleships. It was commissioned in August of 1942 and decommissioned in January of 1947. During World War II, she saw service in both the North Atlantic and the Pacific theaters. The museum opened in January of 1965.

The ship has three self guided tour routes marked out using red, green and yellow arrows. Following the marked paths take you down three or four levels (I lost track) into the depths of the ship and up to the observation level of the superstructure. Using pictures, written descriptions, and mannequins they strive to tell the story of life aboard the ship during the war.

Battleship Alabama forward 16 inch guns.

USS Alabama aft 16 inch guns.

Crew mess area with seats around the aft 16 inch gun turret

In addition to the ships mess, the hospital area, and the engine room which are standard elements on similar tours, this ship museum has a good display of the radar/command and control center and the munitions handling for the big guns. The size of the projectiles for the 16 inch guns call for some impressive mechanisms to bring them from the depths of the ship to the guns on deck.

A-12 CIA Spy plane

After climbing up and down near vertical ladders to navigate the ship tours, I went into the pavilion that holds aircraft from world war II to the present. They have a number of aircraft in the collection that I haven’t seen at other museums. In the pavilion is an A-12 CIA spy plane. The Lockheed built A-12 was a successor to the U-2 and a precursor to the SR-71 Blackbird.

B-52D in Vietnam era night camouflage

Across the main parking lot is a B-52D  Stratofortress. It is painted in a night flight camouflage scheme used for the Vietnam war. Since many B-52 aircraft are still in service after 60 years, it is surprising to see this one here. Elsewhere on the grounds I saw a DC-3, a B-25 bomber and an exhibit of Coast Guard boats and a helicopter.

DC-3 as seen from the deck of the Alabama

Vietnam era gun boat

The other major boat to tour at this facility is the World War II submarine the USS Drum. It is mounted on dry land, not afloat. Once you climb the stairs up to the deck your can enter the bow torpedo room and work your way aft to the other torpedo room. The tour passes through the officers sleeping area, the control room, and the engine room. For some reason, I’ve been in quite a few submarine museums. Climbing through the small water tight hatches gets old fast.

All 55 of the pictures I took can be found in my Google Photos shared album Battleship Alabama.

With travel and touring time my day trip lasted about six plus hours. Tomorrow I will be moving on east with the motorhome.