It is better being here wishing you were there than being there wishing you were here!
Our dance with Florence!!
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Clara is at the mountain house with some friends. I'm in Beaufort.
We have Airbnb guest arriving today from Waynesville, NC, which is very near to where we lived for a couple of years – 1995-1997. It is one of our favorite places.
Brian and Sunny check in and immediately, we hit it off. In a few minutes, we are in the kayaks in First Deep Creek enjoying a beautiful high tide paddle, even getting pictures of the herd of horses on the island.
Meanwhile, there is talk of a tropical depression somewhere near Africa. At this point I don't think it even has a name.
Brian, Sunny and I plan to get together tomorrow to check out Brian's sailboat which is located in Atlantic Beach. Maybe even a nice sail
Monday, September 10, 2018
Clara and her friends have a great day at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville visiting the Chihuly glass exhibition. We had seen the Home of Chuhuly a couple years ago in Florida.
I realize early that I have a doctors appointment in Morehead, so I leave a message for Brian and Sunny that we'll catch up later today.
On the way to the doctors' office, I hear on the radio about a hurricane. And they predict it is headed for the East Coast of the US, more specifically, right toward us.
I don't get excited about hurricanes. We've seen several, and the weather guessers always make it sound like it's going to be a lot worse than it turns out, and of course the news channels are screaming as usual. Nothing new!
But now I have a boat in the water at Town Creek Marina (which I had planned to take Brian and Sunny out to Cape Lookout on) and an RV in storage. So I pay a little more attention.
After my doctor's appointment, I decide to pick up a couple of things – West Marine, I need a new horn for the boat, and Lowes – I need a hitch for the CRV in case, for some remote reason, I need to pull the boat out of the water.
I stop by the marina on the way home, and things are frantic. They're taking boats out of the water and putting them in the parking lot. They are preparing for a serious event.
Okay, it's time to start thinking about the RV, which is sitting outside at the storage facility where I had been keeping it inside (at the same place). I talk to the owner of the RV storage facility and he recommends I put it back where I had had it before, inside. Ok, I do that. This is the first move of the bus.
On arrival at home, I see Brian and Sunny and suggest that they may want to consider leaving a little earlier than their planned Thursday departure. But they really want to stay and see a hurricane. Ok with me (at this point).
Clara is still in the mountains.
As the evening progresses, I figure I might as well start taking some of the outside furniture and putting it in the workshop. And I do.
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| I take a Category 4 storm seriously. We've hung around for Category 1, 2 and even 3, but not a 4. |
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
After catching a glimpse at the weather forecast, I begin thinking this “S***, this could be real”.
Now they're talking about a category 4 or 5 hurricane hitting between Swansboro and Jacksonville. There hasn't been anything close to this since 1954 (Hazel).
First, I better get the boat out of the water, which is generally not a one-man job. First, I'll pick up the trailer (in storage at the same storage facility as the motorhome), then I'll take it to the marina and they can load it directly to the trailer. I'm concerned that the Honda CRV won't be able to pull the boat out of the water and up the ramp. The boat's around 4,000 pounds, and the CRV isn't designed to do that.
When I go to check on the boat trailer. I start pulling the tire covers off and find a wasp nest on one of the tires. Go to Ace hardware, and get wasp spray, then back to the trailer. No more wasp.
I get to the marina, and there is no way to get close to the travel lift which is required to lift the boat on the trailer. Obviously, I am going to have to take the boat to the boat ramp nearby and hope the CRV is going to be able to pull it up the ramp.
So now, I'm left with taking the car/trailer to the boat ramp (thankfully very close), then going to the marina and taking the boat to the ramp and single-handedly, drive it on the trailer and then, maybe pulling it out of the water with the weak-kneed CRV.
Good fortune follows and the boat is out of the water.
Meanwhile, I think it would be a good idea to take the motorhome to the house and get it charged up and ready to leave when Clara gets home later today.
So I take the motorhome out of the inside storage and decide to move the boat in there.
On the way to the house in the motorhome, I call Clara and she vetoes the idea of taking the motorhome anywhere. So I take the motorhome back to the storage facility, move the boat out and put the motorhome back in, then move the boat to the outside storage.
By now, it's time for Clara to arrive. She's driving back from the mountain house today (a day or so early – the ladies have been watching the storm movement and want to be home).
She arrives around 3:30 pm. Her goal is to be sure that all the yard art is safely tucked away. There's a lot of yard art and I've been trying to identify it all and take it in. But there is hidden stuff that I didn't know about, so off it goes to storage.
Meantime, before she arrived, I had gotten the RV out of storage and brought it to the house. I have made the decision independently (never a good idea) that we are going to leave town in the motorhome. We can go to Slade's home in Cary, or we can head South, away from where the hurricane is predicted to go.
By now, based on the little bit we're hearing on the news and on the weather apps, this storm is still expected to be “catastrophic” to Carteret County.
And I hear that Carteret County is under a mandatory evacuation. That's ridiculous. Obviously, the Governor doesn't know or understand Carteret County people. Most of the natives are not going to leave, mandatory evacuation or not.
But we are leaving- not because of a mandatory evacuation, but because we can take our home with us.
We call Slade and tell him the plan. We'll take the motorhome to Cary and in case they lose power, we'll have the refrigerator/freezer in the motorhome to help them out, plus my little 2000 watt generator and the 10,000-watt generator in the motorhome. At least we'll have some air conditioning and power when they lose power.
At the last minute (6pm), we head out, but instead of heading to Cary and the kids, (there are feet of rain predicted inland when the hurricane come ashore), we decide that the best tack is a port turn South. No specific destination – just South.
We head toward Wilmington (Hwy 24/17) and continue toward I95. At about
Whiteville (and 11 PM), we decide we can't go further, so we stop at a former Walmart parking lot, start the generator (which runs all night for AC) and crash in the bed.
We've thrown anything we can think of in the car and motorhome and tried to get as much out of the freezer (think 50+ pounds of shrimp), and start throwing away anything else (because we figure we'll lose power). We have no idea what we have with us (remember at this point, the predictions are for 150 mph winds – and although our home has toughed out many hurricanes since it was built in 1938 I'm not sure what to expect with 150 mph winds). I do get the small safe that we have the vital documents in and a box of photo books. I'm now prepared for the worst.
We understand the power of the wind. We routinely get 80-90 mph winds at our mountain home in the winter. It is almost impossible to stand up in that kind of wind. And the roar inside the house is pretty loud. The first thing we did after we moved in and experienced these winds, we had hurricane panels made for the big windows.
At this point, we're really wondering if there will be much left of anything in Beaufort. Remember 150 mph winds.
As a side note: Last year, hurricane Irma went through the Virgin Islands and then the northern Florida Keys. In December, we went to Key West for the winter and drove through the devastation which was still very visible 3 months after that hurricane. And in April, we chartered a boat in the Virgin Islands and saw places that had been completely wiped out when Irma went through.
Although I haven't had hurricane insurance on our property in Beaufort before, when we returned home from the islands, I did get hurricane insurance. What I had seen in the Keys and the Virgin Islands had made an impression.
Therefore, we felt a little better now, because we had insurance. If anything happened to the house in the predicted 150 mph winds, we had the most valuable things that couldn't be replaced with us.
Wednesday, September 12, 2018.
We wake up early, knowing that we've made a good decision to leave and head South.
Slade calls a few minutes after we get out of bed and says, “Dad, have you seen the latest forecast”. “No”. “Well, you better look”. The forecast is for it to turn in a more southerly direction and come ashore about the NC/SC line.
Guess where we are! The NC/SC line!
Okay, what to do now. We felt confident that heading South is the right decision. But is it?
We can go to Slade's in Raleigh, turn around and go back to Beaufort, go to the mountain house or continue South.
I call the RV Park at Naval Submarine Station Kings Bay in the most Southeastern part of Georgia and we can get a site there for a few days. Done. We head South. Only a 4-hour drive.
Wrong. It seems everyone else had the same idea – head South! Parts of I95 are a parking lot.
8 hours later, we're settled in a beautiful location in the RV park at Kings Bay Naval Base – and God only knows what happens next.
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Wow!, we were really tired from the drive. Both of us slept for 13 hours.
After getting up, we check the weather forecast and it seems that the weather guessers are still guessing. The storm either is/isn't going to hit NC or SC. It is/isn't going to be a Category 2/3/4.
It is going to produce a lot of rain – somewhere. That somewhere is most likely going to impact how/when we start back North and to home.
So, we decide that this isn't a bad place to be. We extend our reservation for a week.
And there is a nice pool on base.
Friday, September 14, 2018
Well, the storm is/isn't coming ashore at Wilmington.
We do hear that there is some significant damage (mostly trees from what we hear) in Carteret County. The news is rather spotty and comes primarily through Facebook from people who can still post there.
So far as we can tell, our house is okay. This news comes through a neighbor from Ohio who owns the house behind us. Their neighbor in Beaufort called them in Ohio, then they called us in Georgia to tell us that our home in Beaufort looks okay -maybe.
I think we've made a good decision, even though we'd love to be home and start cleaning up. But it's nice here, no gas lines, no panic in the stores, and beautiful weather.
BUT, with the weather guessers still guessing, and seemingly having no idea what to expect, we had best keep a close eye on what's going on. We are only a couple hundred miles away from the outer rims of the storm, and you never know. Maybe we will have to evacuate to North Carolina.
Tonight we enjoyed a nice seafood dinner at a local restaurant.
Saturday, September 15, 2018
Well, now the flooding and rain are making big impacts. From what we can tell from looking at Facebook and websites, all the roads into Carteret County are flooded, and I 95 and I 40 are flooded in some places.
This clearly indicates that we are going to be here longer than originally planned. We may still try to move further North if we can secure reservations, but not before.
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| There are so many evacuees from the hurricane here at Kings Bay that we have a Hurricane Party |
Sunday, September 16, 2018
Hot! Hot!
We had forgotten how hot it is when the temperature index goes over 100 degrees. We literally don't go out during the day if we can help it – and it appears that no one else in the park does either. Just to hot.
We use the time to clean up the RV. It needed it.
Monday, September 17, 2018
We keep hearing rumors that there is access to Beaufort now, but nothing confirmed. There may be a way from Raleigh using 264 to Greenville. That part of the state didn't get as much rain so the roads may not be flooded. BUT, we can't get that far North on I-95. The DOT reports that I-95 is flooded in numerous spots North of Lumberton. This means we can't get to Hwy 264.
We decided to make reservations at Santee State Park in South Carolina. We've stayed there several times. It's about halfway back, so at least we should only have a 1-day drive from there when the roads to open up.
Tonight we had dinner with Martha Willy Johnson, a high school classmate of mine who lives near Jacksonville Fl.
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Today, the chances of getting to Beaufort from here (easily) seem even less of a possibility. I-40 is closed, Hwy 74 from 40 to Wilmington is closed, and it appears that portions of 17/24 between Wilmington and Morehead City are closed - all from flooding.
There may be detours and workarounds, but with this 38,000-pound 71-foot bus/car combination, we're not taking any backroads where we might have to turn around and maneuver.
So this morning we decided to head to Patrick AFB near Cape Kennedy, instead of heading North to Santee State Park. We cancel those reservations. We might as well take advantage of our time here and at least see and do something interesting. However, after about 45 minutes driving South and getting just South of Jacksonville, we have second thoughts - this adds another day to getting back home when the roads clear.
So we get reservations at one of our favorite military campgrounds, Mayport Naval Station. It's a great location, right on the river, and there are lots more things to do around there.
Tonight we went to Safe Harbor restaurant, one of the favorite seafood restaurants in the area.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
We're beginning to hear that power is being restored in spotty locations in Carteret County. That's encouraging, but the highways are still flooded.
We are seriously thinking about leaving here tomorrow and detouring via I-26 to Charlotte, up I-85, I-40 and highway 70 to Beaufort. According to Google Maps, it's less than 200 miles further than the direct route.
One of the great things about staying on military bases is their swimming facilities. And Mayport has among the best I've seen. So this morning, as I did at Kings Bay a few times, I get to swim. It always makes me feel better.
For dinner, back to Safe Harbor restaurant for another great dinner.
Thursday, September 20, 2018
It is frustrating. I am finding that there is little reliable information about road closure due to the flooding. Obviously, the news (print and other media) is old information and unreliable. The DOT websites seem to be the best source, but sometimes they don't agree with emergency management reports from the various counties.
So the only way to find out is to go.
This morning we left Mayport and headed North and have made it to Santee State Park on Lake Marion South Carolina.
We've stopped here many times on our treks North and South.
It looks like we can get back to Beaufort tomorrow. At least I'm going to try. Although the news media and DOT says not to go the Wilmington, NC, we're going to Wilmington, NC. Everything that I can find says there is a way to get through Wilmington and get on Highway 17 and 24 to Beaufort. I have no idea where we'll be spending tomorrow night, but we're going North.
We got back to Beaufort with very few problems. At one point, it seemed as though we had made a really bad decision.
We were on the only road that was shown to be open through Conway, SC. Outside Conway, we started meeting traffic headed in the opposite direction (West) from us (East). There was a 15-18 mile line of traffic (barely moving) and all heading away from the supposed flooding on the coast. We began to really wonder what was going on but didn't really have much choice about turning around at this point. We were on 2 lane highways the whole time, and finding a place to turn around this 71-foot rig was impractical. So we just kept on - and no one else was going our way.
We never ran into any problems and eventually were on the bypass around Wilmington. It appeared that everything but the bypass was impassable, but thankfully, we didn't run into any problems.
We arrived home in the evening and were very pleased to find very little damage. Some shingles had been blown off the carport and a small section of the roof on the house. We had no water damage and no trees blown down. We were lucky.
In retrospect, we could have easily stayed home. But we enjoyed the trip.
Although, if there is another Cat 4 or 5 hurricane is predicted, we'll leave again. As long as it's a Cat 1 or 2, we're comfortable staying.
Because of the hurricane, several of our Airbnb guest cancelled, but there were several contractors who needed space. We eventually were booked primarily by insurance adjustors.
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Today, the chances of getting to Beaufort from here (easily) seem even less of a possibility. I-40 is closed, Hwy 74 from 40 to Wilmington is closed, and it appears that portions of 17/24 between Wilmington and Morehead City are closed - all from flooding.
There may be detours and workarounds, but with this 38,000-pound 71-foot bus/car combination, we're not taking any backroads where we might have to turn around and maneuver.
So this morning we decided to head to Patrick AFB near Cape Kennedy, instead of heading North to Santee State Park. We cancel those reservations. We might as well take advantage of our time here and at least see and do something interesting. However, after about 45 minutes driving South and getting just South of Jacksonville, we have second thoughts - this adds another day to getting back home when the roads clear.
So we get reservations at one of our favorite military campgrounds, Mayport Naval Station. It's a great location, right on the river, and there are lots more things to do around there.
Tonight we went to Safe Harbor restaurant, one of the favorite seafood restaurants in the area.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
We're beginning to hear that power is being restored in spotty locations in Carteret County. That's encouraging, but the highways are still flooded.
We are seriously thinking about leaving here tomorrow and detouring via I-26 to Charlotte, up I-85, I-40 and highway 70 to Beaufort. According to Google Maps, it's less than 200 miles further than the direct route.
One of the great things about staying on military bases is their swimming facilities. And Mayport has among the best I've seen. So this morning, as I did at Kings Bay a few times, I get to swim. It always makes me feel better.
For dinner, back to Safe Harbor restaurant for another great dinner.
Thursday, September 20, 2018
It is frustrating. I am finding that there is little reliable information about road closure due to the flooding. Obviously, the news (print and other media) is old information and unreliable. The DOT websites seem to be the best source, but sometimes they don't agree with emergency management reports from the various counties.
So the only way to find out is to go.
This morning we left Mayport and headed North and have made it to Santee State Park on Lake Marion South Carolina.
We've stopped here many times on our treks North and South.
It looks like we can get back to Beaufort tomorrow. At least I'm going to try. Although the news media and DOT says not to go the Wilmington, NC, we're going to Wilmington, NC. Everything that I can find says there is a way to get through Wilmington and get on Highway 17 and 24 to Beaufort. I have no idea where we'll be spending tomorrow night, but we're going North.
We got back to Beaufort with very few problems. At one point, it seemed as though we had made a really bad decision.
We were on the only road that was shown to be open through Conway, SC. Outside Conway, we started meeting traffic headed in the opposite direction (West) from us (East). There was a 15-18 mile line of traffic (barely moving) and all heading away from the supposed flooding on the coast. We began to really wonder what was going on but didn't really have much choice about turning around at this point. We were on 2 lane highways the whole time, and finding a place to turn around this 71-foot rig was impractical. So we just kept on - and no one else was going our way.
We never ran into any problems and eventually were on the bypass around Wilmington. It appeared that everything but the bypass was impassable, but thankfully, we didn't run into any problems.
We arrived home in the evening and were very pleased to find very little damage. Some shingles had been blown off the carport and a small section of the roof on the house. We had no water damage and no trees blown down. We were lucky.
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| Front Street during the hurricane. Thankfully, we weren't here. |
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| The oak tree in the back yard shed a lot of limbs |
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| Before we returned, we had gotten in contact with a guy who would clean up the debris and limbs in our yard. On arrival at home there was a pile of tree limbs on the street. A great relief not having to do that after arrival. |
In retrospect, we could have easily stayed home. But we enjoyed the trip.
Although, if there is another Cat 4 or 5 hurricane is predicted, we'll leave again. As long as it's a Cat 1 or 2, we're comfortable staying.
Because of the hurricane, several of our Airbnb guest cancelled, but there were several contractors who needed space. We eventually were booked primarily by insurance adjustors.
