Road Trip Hurricane Challenge

“ In reality, you don’t ever change the hurricane. You just learn to stay out of its path.” ( Jody Picoult)

I’ve lived in South Florida for over fifty years and thus have faced plenty of stress-filled moments as the annual onset of hurricane season occurs. I might say in oddly casual fashion that I’ve often faced such rain and wind filled disasters as restful retreats from life’s normality of work day stress before, during, and after they occur. But let’s face facts. For as many hurricanes become stronger and larger these days and as I grow older, I seem less tolerant of likely electrical power outages, gas and food shortages, as well as flooded city streets accompanying each close by landfall.

So let’s consider my most current logic of road tripping as the best solution to deal with the likely catastrophic result of monster sized Hurricane Ian as it tracks toward the southwest coast of Florida in the next two days. For an opportunity now presented itself for Ruth and I to escape northward from Fort Lauderdale on our Colorado bound adventures two days earlier than intended to hopefully veer away from this impending storm.

Thus, I envisioned myself thinking critically in chess game fashion so to speak with Ian as I strategized our first day route based on “Weather Channel” forecasts about when and where the hurricane’s landfall near Tampa would likely occur. Know then we slowly made our way up heavily congested Florida Turnpike and Interstate 75 followed by a more leisurely westerly jog along U.S. 27 to reach our first destination of Tallahassee today.

Perhaps then you might gain a greater sense in the following photo set from our recent travels about how “Killer” Hurricane Ian packing winds of over 150 miles per hour will likely come ashore along the Florida coast in such destructive fashion Thankfully, we’re away from such chaos as we head tomorrow for Vicksburg, Mississippi.