Friday May 17th 2019

Thanks to the change in time zone I was awake early this morning. I had plenty of time to get ready for the day’s travel. An early departure would mean heavy traffic around Pensacola, so I waited until 9:30AM to depart. I finished the 260 mile travel day at 3PM. The elapsed time was the same as yesterday for seventy miles less distance traveled. It took longer to buy gas today and I stopped at the Louisiana Welcome center for twenty minutes or so.

Traffic was fairly heavy most of the way. The only place it really bogged down was at the entrance to the tunnel in Mobile. The speed slowed to around twenty miles an hour entering the tunnel, but increased back to normal highway speed by the exit to the tunnel. The good news was the price of gas. The Alabama gas price was thirty four cents a gallon cheaper than I paid Thursday in Florida. The Mississippi price was equally low. I’m not sure what the price is here in Louisiana.

I’m at the Baton Rouge KOA just east of the city. I stopped here on my return to the east in February of 2017 and like it, so this is a return visit. My original plan was to spend a single night then continue my trip west, but I’m still uncertain about the weather west of here. I decided to spend an extra night here before heading into the area of the country that the news is calling home to a “major severe weather event”. Driving through the area is just a matter of selecting the route appropriate to the timing of the storms. The problem is I had planned to stay in the area for a couple of days, before reaching my reservations in the Albuquerque NM area on Friday. I’ll listen to the forecasts tomorrow and adjust accordingly.