Our Second Day of Evacuation from Hurricane Irma

We got up about 7:30 this morning. We were able to get a news station last night on TV and Hurricane Irma is still a Category 5 and still heading for Florida. According to the news this evacuation may be the largest one ever. I know there were a LOT of cars on the road yesterday and probably just as many today.

After walking Tinker and having our morning coffee, I took pictures of our campsite and some of the campground. The number on our campsite sign is faded and hard to make out, so I'm guessing we are in campsite F-11.

We kind of took our time breaking camp this morning. Mike didn't hook our sewer hose up last night and he did that this morning and emptied our black and gray water tanks. I talked to a woman this morning who was also evacuating and they hadn't quite decided what direction to go in - north or farther west. I told her we were going to a campground at Robertsdale, AL. I think most of the campers here are also evacuating, since most were getting ready to leave this morning.

We left Madison Campground this morning a little before the check-out time of 11:00 and headed west on I-10. We stopped at a Shell station at Lloyd, FL to get gas and paid $3.559 a gallon for premium. We gained an hour when we crossed into the Central Time Zone. 

We weren't on I-10 West very long before we encountered traffic that was backed up.

We stopped at noon for gas at a Shell station near Lloyd, FL where we bought gas (premium) for $3.559 a gallon. We decided to stop for lunch when we got to Tallahassee and pulled into a Publix parking lot on US-319 and I fixed sandwiches and we had pasta salad. Then we got back on I-10 and then we saw this
sign.

Tinker has been good while it's taken us so long on this trip and his solution to the slow traffic is napping - 

but I think he is really wondering "Are we there yet?"

We stopped at 2:30 to get gas at the Pilot station at Marianna, FL and paid $3.240 a gallon for premium. We had now driven 117 miles from the campground in 4½ hours.

After leaving the Pilot at Marianna, we saw long lines of utility trucks heading east on I-10 to help with the recovery from Hurricane Irma.

We got to Pensacola around 5:30 or so and decided to stop at a Publix near Exit 7 to get some groceries and we bought an Ultimate Sub at the Deli to have for supper tonight. Then it was back on to I-10 to Styx River RV Resort.

We arrived at Styx River at 6:45 Central Time which to us was 7:45 Eastern Time. We had driven 272 miles today and it took us 8¾ hours including our stops.

After we leveled the trailer, Mike hooked up the electric and water connections and then we sat down for supper. We split the sub sandwich we bought at Publix and have been relaxing since then. We didn't even put out the Dish satellite and just tuned in some local stations on the TV. We're just glad to be settled for a few days and off the highways with all of the traffic.