Thursday May 16th 2019

My plan was to get on the road west by 9AM. It is pretty hard to accomplish when you don’t wake up until 8:30AM. Working steadily I ate breakfast and finished packing. I was on track to leave at 10AM when a minor gotcha came out to byte me. The tire pressure sensor on the car showed low pressure in one of the tires. I needed to get the compressor out and add some air. By the time I got everything ready and left the state park it was 10:30AM.

The travel day was long but uneventful. I filled the gas tank about an hour into the journey. It was just driving and eating up miles from that point. Crossing northern Florida on Interstate 10 I passed through a wide stretch of miles showing damage from hurricane Michael. There were down trees everywhere. In some areas logging equipment had cleaned up the downed trees, but in other areas broken trees leaned on other trees and littered the ground. Many road signs were twisted in odd directions and others were missing. It’s been eight months and the I-10 area is fifty miles inland from the coast where the hurricane hit. The damage nearer the coast is much worse.

I arrived in at my overnight stop at the Milton Gulf Pines KOA in the Pensacola area around 3PM with the help of a convenient time zone change. I traveled 330 miles in about five and a half hours. Tomorrow’s travel is a little more reasonable at 250 miles to the Baton Rouge area. Getting through Mobile Alabama is the only real challenge to the drive. I still haven’t committed to a route west of Baton Rouge. I’m waiting until the weather forecast is a little more certain.