Wednesday August 30th 2023

I am still tired today after yesterday’s travel, traffic and heat. The travel was successful. There is no real indication of Idalia here. It was a sunny day with perhaps a little more wind than normal. The temperature peaked at a reasonable 90 degrees.

My first order of business this morning was checking on the progress of the storm. The Weather Channel and some of the local TV station in the storms path that Directv provided were my source of information. It seems the storm came ashore a little further west than anticipated as a category 3 storm. The area I ran from got more rain and wind than originally forecast, but nothing news worthy. I am glad I put miles between me and the storm. Friday I’ll find out if there was any significant damage when I return.

Other areas in my recent and future travel path got more serious impacts. The Jacksonville area where I spent most of the summer got heavy rain, tropical storm force winds and were under tornado watches and warnings most of the day. Jennings Florida on I-75 at the Georgia boarder where I spent a couple of nights last week got the center of the storm as a category 1 hurricane. Neither of these locations would have been any fun to ride out the storm.

Going forward over the next couple of weeks may require a few changes to plans. The weekend starting on the 8th of September was going to be spent in Perry Florida. It was right on the mainline path of the hurricane only about twelve miles inland. The major news services and the Weather Channel all had reporters stationed there. They reported many trees down and massive power outages. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the campground closed for a couple of weeks and I really don’t want to go into an area trying to recover from the storm. The three weeks after that are scheduled at state parks in the Bradenton and Sarasota area. They were closed yesterday without a planned reopening date. Right now there are reports of some wind damage down there, but I suspect it will be cleaned up over the next week allowing the parks to reopen.

I spent the day relaxing around my RV home. My one walk around the campground didn’t result in any interesting discovery. This place has mostly long term residents and nice amenities. It is a nice clean organized place, but not much in the way of scenery.