Day 9 & 10-September 14-15, 2017-The Road Home
Thursday, 9/14-Drove 300 miles in 7-3/4 hours.
Friday, 9/15-Drove 230 miles in 5 hours.
Much better weather, sunny, warmer and more humid. 85 on Thursday and 92 on Friday.
Thursday 9/14-We had already decided not to take I-75 home because we heard it’s clogged with traffic and a bridge in Lake City, FL might be closed due to flooding. US 27 goes right from our campground and is a straight shot home. It’s a two lane each way road, aka the “Scenic Hometown Highway”. A few minutes after we got on the road we were in Georgia on a three mile stretch of the original “Trail of Tears” in Chicamaugua, GA, with monuments on both sides of the road. We didn’t stop but it sure will be a place to return to. We passed through small towns, all of them “historic” although one was founded the year after I was born so I must be historic, too. Towns like Lafayette, Summerville, Rome, Cedartown and Bremen. All with much history and wonderful little main streets. We stopped in a Walmart parking lot in Carrollton for lunch then on to Columbus. From there it was clear sailing to Albany, GA with no towns or traffic lights and 65 MPH limits. I had called ahead to a campground to make sure there was room and they had no storm damage. The only damage they had was a big limb that fell near the playground and some branches were down but by the time we got there they had cleaned up most of it. Of course we met someone from Florida there, this time a man from Hudson, not far south of us. Didn’t even unhook, we want to get on the road as soon as we can tomorrow.
Friday 9/15-From US 27 we now are on US 19 which takes us 2 miles from our house. A few small town such as Camilla and Pelham, then the road took some by-passes around other towns so we didn’t have as much stop and go. A lot of cotton fields, mostly all picked clean already. Or maybe blown clean, there are quite a few trees and limbs down on the side of the road. Not much flooding from what we can see, the creeks don’t look too swollen. Very enjoyable trip home, I think if we have to do this again we’ll go US 19 & 27 and avoid 75, but let’s assume we never have to do this again. When we got home we were surprised to see no branches down, no damage, nothing out of the ordinary. And our wonderful neighbor Jackie had put the food back in our freezer, turned the AC back on, thrown out the food that would go bad in the fridge and did just about everything except turn down the sheets. They had also shocked the pool for us and probably other stuff we don’t even realize yet. Thank you, thank you, thank you!