Heading for Florida

 Day 1:  Monday, February 22, 2016

The big day for departure has finally arrived.  I made the mistake of starting the packing about 2 months ago and then the last weeks I had nothing to do but sit around waiting to leave.  We got on the road heading for Cincinnati at about 8:00.  Our plan is to spend the afternoon being entertained by our grand-kids while their parents were working.  The weather was cool and sunny making it an easy trip.  The truck and trailer both worked well. As I am sure you can imagine, it’s great to be with the little ones. And of course with their parents. 

Day 2: Tuesday, February 23

Today was a long drive day.  We left Cincinnati at 5:00 am and traveled about 700 miles some of which was through light rain.  Highway I-75 is a good road and the traffic was tolerable.  So, we made that trek in about 13 hours.  One of the problems that we encounter when pulling the boat is finding a place to grab a bite to eat.  Our truck and trailer unit is about 50 feet long and most of the fast foodies don’t have parking space that will accommodate us.  We frequently end up eating at truck stops parked amongst semis.

We spent the night in a cheap motel in Adel GA, about 40 miles from the Florida border.  Mapquest tells us that we will have about a 6 hour trip tomorrow.

Day 3: Wednesday, February 24

After a good night’s sleep and a great breakfast of pancakes at an IHOP, we were on the road at 7:00.  The highways in South Georgia are terrific but there turned out to be hundreds of miles of construction in Florida.  It rained lightly off and on all morning and as we were pulling out of a fuel stop around noon, we got blasted with an intense downpour.  We pulled off the road at the next exit and found a Burger King that had parking.

Back out on the road, the sky to the south was an ominous black and for the next 3 hours, we were literally pounded by the hardest rain that I can recall.  Traffic on the interstate was traveling between 25 and 35 mph in visibility less the 50 feet.  Water was ponding on the roads creating hydroplaning; a continual problem.  My phone kept sounding an alert for weather but when I would turn it on to find out what it was about, I found nothing.  Finally, just south of the Punta Gorda airport, in the height of the storm, we got another alert and this time it was printed on the screen.  A tornado was sighted just north of the airport moving across the interstate.  Holy Cow!!  We knew it was bad, but…..

Our GPS told us we would reach our destination on Marco Island at about 1:45 but we actually arrived at around 4:00.  Amazingly, we saw no accidents in the 3 hour stint in the deluge.  After we got out of the worst part, we pulled into a truck stop to get some fuel and were approached by a gentleman who asked if we had just come out of the storm.  We told him that we had and he showed us a 6 foot long tree branch that had jammed into his grill and cracked his windshield.  I checked out the boat and found that the main hatch had come open and there was about an inch of water in the cabin floor.  Truly, a minor problem compared to what could have happened.

We parked the boat in a storage area and sponged the water out of the cabin.  Tomorrow, if it is sunny, we will open it up and dry out the wet cushions.  We had considered spending the night in the boat but opted to hunt down a motel and enjoy a dry warm comfortable night’s sleep.  That was accomplished in a nice Comfort Inn.