Just a few more of these to go. Things that would have been blog posts had I had a blog at the time they happened. This one was sent to friends and family September 6, 2004 02:31:27 UTC.

So, we left Apalachicola and then within the hour on the radio we heard that the forecasts had changed, and they now definitely thought Frances would be a hurricane again when it hit the panhandle after strengthening in the gulf. And the predicted landfall location was… Apalachicola. Right on the nose. And the panhandle coast, including Apalachicola was announcing evacuations for coastal areas. Including where our motel was. Well, that was that. We’d apparently made the right decision.

Anyway, we main roads were not bad at all along our route, so we did the “fastest” route instead of a back road way. And we indeed made it all the way to New Orleans. We are now in a Motel 6 in New Orleans. (Brandy remembered that ALL Motel 6’s are “pet friendly” so we didn’t even have to search or ask.)

So, we’re in New Orleans. Which is out of the “cone” of possible movement for the center of Frances. Well away from the cone. We probably could have stopped earlier, but we felt like continuing. And neither of us had ever been to New Orleans. Don’t know how much sightseeing we’ll be able to do anyway. We’ll probably mostly be at the motel. But we shall see.

The local New Orleans news is saying that we shouldn’t even get any rain from Frances unless it shifts way further west than expected. So looks like we won’t see any of the fun weather. :-)

Currently we have booked two nights here. That should be enough for Frances to get out of the way. Then depending on what the news is saying about if people should return home we’ll either head home or stay here a little while longer.

And then as soon as we get there, we’ll probably have to leave again for Hurricane Ivan, which seems to be heading right at Florida too. Although perhaps Ivan will go visit Ivan in Miami instead of going to Melbourne like Frances. :-) [Although Ivan is far enough away still that it could pretty much go anywhere from Mexico to the Carolinas.]

Anyway, fun fun fun. The news shows a lot of damage in Melbourne / Palm Bay, but keeps saying it is much less there than a little further south, and it could have been much worse, and most of the damage is not catastrophic. Which is good. But we won’t really have any idea how things are until we get back, or we contact folks we know there who stayed to have them look at the house. We’ll see.

In the mean time, time to go eat, then I think Amy wants to use the pool here. This time we stopped and got suits for all of us. Then to bed. It has been another long day.