Wednesday October 5th 2022

Today was a travel day. It was time for the second half of my trip south on Interstate 75 back to Florida. The traffic today was just as bad as Sunday for most of the run. It lighten up some after I passed Valdosta and approached the Florida line. Overall it didn’t do anything to reduce my distaste for the route.

Yesterday I scouted out the best gas station to fill up the tank in my motorhome. My selection was about four miles in the wrong direction. A Pilot station a little less than four miles north on Interstate 75 had the best deal. It was the station I had pump issues at on Sunday afternoon. The eight mile detour would consume one gallon of gas, so the price had to be significantly better than a station on my southbound itinerary. At seventeen cents a gallon cheaper it was easily the best deal when buying more than fifty gallons of gas.

With all the research and analysis complete I departed the campground around 10:30 for the gas station. That was the last thing that went according to plan. The price of gas had gone up ten cents overnight. It was still a good deal, but the same problems I had at the Pilot station on Sunday persisted. The pumps I could get to were broken. There were two other stations at the intersection that advertised the same price, so I went to the BP station that had easy access. I neglected to read the fine print. Credit card sales were ten cents higher. Never the less I put $175 worth of gas in the tank. It wasn’t a full load, but it was close. The good news is that the stations on my southbound route also went up overnight. I still bought gas about ten cents cheaper on my northern detour.

After completing my gas detour I was headed south on Interstate 75 a little after 11AM. I think there were still a few convoys of equipment heading south for hurricane cleanup, but there were also a few convoys of utility line trucks heading back north. The week of hurricane clean up was over for many of the power company workers. That tracks with the news that power restoration is ahead of schedule in most of the state.

I stopped at the Florida Welcome center for about half an hour to time my arrival at my home for the next six nights to be after 1PM. By 2:30PM I was setup on my site at the Jennings KOA Holiday just south of the Florida Georgia line. This is my fourth visit to this park. My last visit was in the middle of August.