Day 22: Tallahassee, FL

Stop 18: Tallahassee, FL

The news of the day was Tropical Storm Andrea.  We've been watching it build for the last week or so.  It was behind all of those double red flags on the beach at Panama City Beach yesterday.  All of this mornings network newscasts featured correspondents on the pier that we were out on yesterday.

Our original plan for today had been to continue to follow the gulf coast and then cut directly North to Tallahassee.  The shorter, less scenic, route would have been to cut North from Panama City Beach and then follow the I-10 East to Tallahassee.  In light of the heavy rain and the potential for storm surges to flood the low lands along the coast, we elected to take the shorter route (about 116 miles).

Somewhere along the way, we finally crossed into the Eastern time zone (for some reason, the west part of the Florida panhandle is on Central time).

The park in Tallahassee is very nice.  We got set up in the rain, after again changing into yesterday's dirty clothes so today's clothes stayed dry.  Then we took off for the Camping World that we passed on the way through town.  My sister Stacy had suggested that we get a dehumidifier so we got ourselves one of those.  Good idea Stacy!

When we got back to the trailer, we discovered that we had no water pressure.  There seemed to be pressure at the spigot.  The water was making it through the hose.  There was no water at the kitchen and bathroom sinks.  I was going to look through the campground literature to see who we might call out to look at our plumbing (the campground maps always have ads on the back).  Kristen insisted that I talk with the people in the office first.  Good suggestion!  The storm had knocked the power out for the entire RV park (we hadn't even noticed that we had no electricity).  The park is on well water and the pump wasn't functioning.  The pressure that I'd noticed at the spigot and through the hose was just residual pressure (not enough to make it to the sinks).

It has pretty much poured since we got here.  It sounds like this storm is currently striking the shore to the East of us.  The models show it crossing Florida to the Atlantic coast and then moving on ahead of us up the East coast.  We've found, that with our awning out, we can leave the windows and door open along that side of the trailer.  The rain has the temperature down to about 70 so we've been very comfortable this afternoon.  The power finally came back on and (surprise, surprise!) so did the water.

Here's our daily trailer picture:

-J-