Home and Hurrican Helene

Doug and I left Bloomington after the game yesterday with the goal of driving south. We had had an awesome week and neither one of us wanted it to end, but we knew that it would be easier to get back in the early afternoon today then make the trip in one day. Our goal when we left was to make it to Chattanooga and maybe even past Atlanta last night. That changed when we hit rain in Nashville. It slowed the trip down enough that we decided that making it through the mountains was the best that we were going to do last night. It wasn’t very late, but we were both tired from the week and from the game. I had driven the first half of the trip and Doug drove the second.  When it was his turn at the wheel, I started looking for hotel rooms and quickly realized that the Hilton brand was all sold out south of Atlanta. I thought that it was because hurricane victims were staying there. As we drove through southern Georgia this morning, I realized that I was wrong.

Doug and I left the hotel at 7:30 this morning with the goal of making it home by 2 p.m. It would give him time to mow and me time to go to the grocery store and get laundry done. Once we got past Macon, we realized that the hurricane had done a lot of damage in southern Georgia. The news hadn’t really reported on that, so we were a little bit surprised. Everywhere we looked, there were downed billboards, trees, and powerlines. We figured out that rooms weren’t sold out south of Atlanta. Hotels just didn’t have any power. I was glad that we stopped where we did last night and had gotten gas before we left northern Georgia as very few gas stations were open, and the prices were pretty high.

Our only delay was in northern Florida where we were rerouted off of I-75 for five minutes.  Thus, it really didn't make a big difference to our drive. Thankfully, everything looked a lot better once we got to Gainesville. There was minimal damage, and everyone had power thankfully. I was so happy that our home had survived the hurricane. The new roof looked great, and we had absolutely no damage outside or inside except for our "It's 5 o’clock Somewhere" flag had been destroyed and one plant was no longer standing. I will definitely take that knowing that our home was in the path of a category one hurricane and was very appreciative that Uncle Phil moved our patio furniture underneath the awning behind the tiki bar before it hit. 

When we move to Florida, I never really thought about hurricanes and where we should live because of them. We felt very fortunate that we chose Ocala.  We couldn’t ask to be in a better spot to avoid major damage. There is another storm that is supposed to come through next weekend, but thankfully it should not be anything like hurricane Helene. The coast of Florida as well as the states of Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina could use definitely use the break.