Friday September 8th 2023

I was up early to get ready to travel. The weather cooperated and kept the rain away. My departure was right on plan pulling out between 10:30 and 11AM. I completed the 230 mile drive shortly before 3PM. The travel day had a few events that kept it from being a perfect travel day.

The biggest annoyance of the trip happened in the first hour of travel. I when over a good bump and the radio went off. It tried to come back on only to go off again. The power connection to the radio probably came loose. The pod casts I was streaming over bluetooth from my phone went silent. To keep me entertained I put the phone in my lap and used the phone’s speaker. As long as the road surface was fairly smooth the road noise didn’t prevent me from hearing the pod cast. I’ll have to climb under the dash this weekend to check the connection.

Thirty or forty miles east of Tallahassee on Interstate 10, I started to see evidence of the hurricane. Trees on both sides of the road and median were in distress. Some were uprooted and others were snapped off half way up the trunk. In some areas they came down in the road. Crews with chainsaws had cut the trees back, but the down trees hadn’t been removed yet. It looks like the trees haven’t finished coming down yet. Coming around a slight bend at the top of a rise a tree was blocking the passing lane. There was no warning so it clearly was a new issue that I had to squeeze into the line of traffic in the other lane.

The agriculture check station west of Live Oak on Interstate 10 has been turned into a FEMA staging area. There were big trucks unloading supplies in the middle of the area and lots of RVs and temporary housing around the perimeter. The other thing I saw with my quick glances as I was driving by were a lot of tanker trucks. I don’t know if they were for water or fuel. They really looked out of place.

I arrived at Silver Springs State Park east of Ocala shortly before 3PM. I am on site 23 for the next three nights. I booked this site on Monday so I didn’t have to go into the heart of the hurricane area in Perry Florida. I canceled my reservation at the Perry KOA Holiday when I found this site available. It clearly became available because of a cancellation. All of the sites at the State Park are spacious, but they are in the trees. For shade and comfort that is a good thing. For satellite TV access the trees are not so good. I will have to enjoy regular over the air TV this weekend.