Deember 7

December 7

Last night we stopped and picked up a cooked chicken and salad and dinner in the motel. This morning I took off my socks. The temperature outside was 11 degrees so I packed the socks away and am wearing just shoes. As we fought the morning rush hour of transport trucks, we passed the burnt one that had closed the highway all night. It was the cab that was burnt...hope the driver got out ok...no details available.

We spent the rest of the morning dodging trucks and bumps in the road... these highways are crap!!!! In Georgia, we passed work crews cleaning up the massive sections of fallen oak and pine trees from the hurricane.

At noon we stopped at a rest stop/ information center and made lunch, sitting outside in the 20 degree sunshine...sorry...okay, not. It was great and now we are running with the A/C on!!! We can smell the tidal flats, salt water and Georgia Pacific [the company that supplies bathrooms around the country with paper towels.]

Now we are running along the coast. The clouds are disappearing and we are getting more glimpses of the ocean in the distance. The vistas of grassland swamps and ocean are counterpoint to the anxiety of screaming trucks whizzing by! It is amazing to see the number of trees ripped out by the hurricane, especially through south Georgia and North Florida.

We arrived at the boat at 6 pm but it was too dark to do much except make sure that the dinghy is still intact [yay!] and the stuff we left on the deck is still there.  We went to Steak and Shake for dinner and then we checked into an America's Best motel for the night. It is stupid noisy with a bunch of contract workers in town on some project. They're still partying and it's 10:30. I guess you get what you pay for ...only $44.00 a night. I hope the boat is ready to sleep in tomorrow night !!

Hopefully the projected temperature change won't bring precipitation so we can get the boat ready to launch as soon as possible.  Later...