Tuesday October 8th 2024

Today was an eventful and tiring day. It was all to get out of the path of hurricane Milton. I am now safely in the Quality Inn in Kingsland Georgia just over the line from Florida. This area is likely only going to get tropical storm level activity.

My escape plan began yesterday when I rented a storage lot for my RV home. The rest of the day was filled with moving stuff out of my RV to my base camp. Emptying the refrigerator and moving lots of clothes took a lot of time.

This morning I emptied and flushed my holding tanks then hooked up my car for the journey to the storage lot. I needed to get gas along the way, but many stations were out of gas. All of the evacuees and people filling containers for generator fuel have been consuming lots of gas. The stations with gas had long lines an weren’t really motorhome friendly. About halfway to the storage facility the “Low on Fuel” message came on the display. My anxiety level went through the roof, but I manage to get the RV to the storage facility and parked.

On my way to my base camp I tried to fill the gas tank in my car. All the trips back and forth between the motorhome and my base camp used up more gas than I wanted from Sunday’s fill up. The station ran out of gas when I was next in line. It was going to be challenging making it to Georgia on the gas I had.

Back at my base camp I prepared my travel supplies. They included clothes, electronics, food and important papers. When I was packing the important papers, I noticed the storage lot contract was for a different lot number than the one I parked in. I drove back over to the facility to move the motorhome or get them to change my assigned lot. Luckily, they were able to change my assigned lot.

I finally got on the road north about 2PM. The normal travel time is a little less than four hours. It took five and a half hours. When I started, I compared the GPS distance estimate to the miles to empty on my console. In theory, I had thirty miles of cushion. To mitigate that issue with more opportunities to find gas and avoid the gridlock on the interstate, I traveled north on US 27 and US 301. Most of the gas stations were out of gas. The ones that had gas were jammed with cars. I finally got gas well north of Ocala near Starke at a Pilot. They were in the process of getting a fuel delivery.

I arrived around 7:30. It is old motel, but seems clean. I originally booked two nights until Thursday. At check in I extended my checkout until Friday. The storm is moving slower than the original forecast.