North at a snail's pace 9/8/2017

I4 Traffic--Woohoo!!

For the last 2 months we've been planning to travel once I could dispense with weekly, biweekly and even monthly doctors' appointments. We cleared the month of September with the idea that we would head north to visit with friends and visit some interesting spots on the way. What we hadn't counted on was that our departure date would coincide with "evacuation days" from Hurricane Irma for the states of FL, GA, and SC.

We packed up the RV and headed out at what for us was an early departure: 9:15 a.m. Our destination for the day was Charleston, SC where we had a campground reservation for a few days. We were very pleasantly surprised to find that I4 through Orlando was a breeze to navigate--usually, it's a slow slog through heavy traffic as it inches through the city. Yesterday, we were able to keep up a steady 55 mph. Wow--COOL! That feeling of euphoria soon dissipated as we approached I95, as we came up against the wall of FL residents that were fleeing the state ahead of Irma. For 280 miles, we endured constant stop and go traffic that should have taken about 4 1/4 hours, but actually took 7 hours. To say that Ray's blood pressure was extremely elevated would be an understatement. To make matters worse, we ran into a swarm of lovebugs that were plastered on the front of the RV when we arrived at the campground. It wasn't as bad as the last time, but still not great. That was the worst drive we have ever taken--and that's saying a lot, since we have driven thousands of miles.

When we finally arrived at the campground, we were told that they would only accept payment for one night, since they were evacuating on Saturday a.m., and were going to evaluate whether they would allow people to stay tonight (Friday) in the morning. Charleston is expecting a significant storm surge.

So where we go today, tomorrow and for the next several days will be completely determined by the path that Irma  is expected to take. So we'll be watching the forecasts.