Sunday February 19th 2023

The day began bright and sunny. The cool overnight temperature climbed rapidly as I prepared for travel. The temperature was in the seventies by 10:20 when I departed Davenport Florida heading south. It was in the mid to upper eighties when I arrived at my destination 200 miles to the south, but it was a more overcast day. As evening arrived so did a light shower.

My travel day involved dealing with a couple of tight spots. First I needed to go back and forth a couple of times just to get out of my campsite. The way my neighbors parked their cars just made it too narrow to make the turn in without some maneuvering. The net result was that I had to hook up my car after I got out of the site. Luckily nobody needed to drive down the road while I was hooking up. I blocked the entire road.

The second tight spot was at the gas station, but was more of my own making. After giving the station close to two hundred dollars in exchange for more than sixty gallons of gas, the exit from the pump area was blocked by a truck. I thought I could exit through the truck area to the back and headed for a wide aisle in the parking area headed for the back of the station. It soon became clear that my selected route was not a through path. A line of bushes blocked the way. Moving on to plan C, I tried to make a tight turn before entering the dead end aisle. I really didn’t want to unhook the car so I could back up the motorhome. If I made the decision to turn about a foot sooner, I would have been home free. As it is my front wheels climbed the curb and followed it for a few feet while the branches from a low hanging tree scraped the roof. There wasn’t any damage to my RV home or the tree, but it wasn’t one of my better choices.

The remainder of the trip was uneventful and a bit monotonous. I kept looking for hurricane damage as I got closer to the path of both Ian and Nicole. The real damage was closer to the west coast than I was traveling. All I saw were a couple of gas stations with missing plastic from their signs. One thing that broke the monotony was motorcycle groups. This seemed to be a day for a lot of group rides. I passed two different groups. One probably stretched over two miles with all the riders.

I arrived at the Midway Campground in the Big Cypress National Preserve about 2:30 after a little more than four hours on the road. I’ve stayed at this campground several times before. The campground has sites around a pond with an alligator or two in residence. It is located about half way across the state from Naples to Miami. Other than the Big Cypress Preserve there isn’t much around.