Friday April 5th 2024

It was a dry day with low humidity and the temperature was in the mid seventies. These are good characteristics for a travel day, but mother nature had to add in one more ingredient. There was a strong wind out of the west. The gusts added to the constant wind made keeping the motorhome in my lane difficult at times.

I got packed up without much difficulty this morning. It was around 11:30 when I departed Myakka River State Park in Sarasota Florida. With a destination in the southwest suburbs of Orlando most of travel was on Interstate highways. Traffic and construction delays made the trip more difficult than your average interstate drive.

As soon as I got onto Interstate 75 in Sarasota, I was in slow moving traffic caused by the heavy volume. Traffic eased up a little in the southern part of Bradenton, but soon slowed down again for the construction over the Manatee River. When it cleared out again north of the Manatee River, I made it up to highway speeds for first time. Most of my journey to that point was under 20mph.

Heavy traffic continued into the Tampa suburbs before more construction slowed traffic down to a crawl again. It continued all the way to Intestate 4. My average speed through the Plant City and Lakeland areas was above sixty and a few cars were able to go at the 70mph speed limit. The quick drops from highway speeds to slow pace necessitated that I keep my speed down and the distant in front of me up.

The last slowdown was leading into the Orlando area. The traffic usually backs up a few miles before you get to US27. Today was no exception, but it seemed even slower today. Once I was proceeding north on US27 my traffic woes for the day were over. I arrived at Lake Magic RV resort at the intersection of US27 with US192 around 2:30 in the afternoon. Three hours to go 130 miles isn’t too bad given the conditions. It seemed like it was a lot longer.