Remember that storm we were trying to beat? Yeah. It had turned and guess where it was headed towards?
Tallahassee
Yep
All Day Long. We call the dealer .... and do you think they looked at our truck?!?
nope
And guess when the hurricane is supposed to hit Tallahassee? Thursday night around midnight.
So, here we are.
Truck in the dealer. Trailer in the campground. Hurricane hours from landfall. Eye of the hurricane lined up with where we sit.
You feel me? Yeeaaahhhhh
Weather guessers were saying this hurricane was category 1, winds up to 100 mph, for hours. As we drove through town, we saw businesses parking vehicles in front of their plate glass windows, sand bags in front of doors. Everyone was preparing. Guess we should be too.
I've ridden out lots of bad storms, they generally don't last long, usually. But never in a 5th wheel, with dogs who are already petrified of storms, through a hurricane!
So let's find a pet friendly hotel we can ride the storm out in.
We get all checked in, go back to the trailer and load up everything we cannot live without - computers, food, dogs and a couple days of clothes and head back to the hotel.
We got everyone inside and settled in for the night. Our rooms had a nice window seat. I hadn't wanted to watch a hurricane before, but thought if I was going to have to watch this one, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
I sat and watched from my windows seat for HOURS.
Thankfully, that was the most boring storm I ever watched! We did lose power about midnight, but with all the excitement already in our life, I was so tired, I laid down and slept a couple hours until day break.
Once it got light outside where we could see if there were any lines down anywhere, J headed out to check on the trailer to make sure everything was alright.
The park we were in had some damage, thankfully these weren't our rigs and thankfully no one was in either of these rigs when this happened.
We didn't have power but we had a place to stay and a generator. We had plenty of water and food, we were together and we were alright.
The bad news was there were around 70,000 people without power INCLUDING the dealership ..... dun dun duuunnnnn :(
This was Friday, 9/2. What made this a bigger :( was that without power Friday, the service techs do not work on Saturday or Sunday and Monday was what? That's right, Labor Day.
So, here we are, broke down Wednesday night, waited all day Thursday without anyone looking at our truck, crews couldn't work Friday because of the hurricane knocking out power, no work Saturday or Sunday, and holiday on Monday. That's 5 days just hanging out waiting.
We looked through all our options - trading in our truck for a new one and getting a hitch installed and leaving, renting a truck with a hitch to continue on our way or wait. We waited.
While we waited, we got to know the area pretty good. Since we were running on a generator, we had to drive to get fuel. It was about 30 miles to start with, but got shorter distances every day since more and more people were getting power back.
The first time we drove to get fuel, we passed several boom trucks from neighboring states coming in to help restore power. We were very thankful to see them headed our direction!
No comments:
Post a Comment