Hurricane Matthew came to call and I split town

I checked the projected storm path on that Wednesday morning and it looked like Matthew was going to pass directly over the Daytona Beach, Florida area.  I have sheltered in place before during a hurricane and it’s no fun.  The power goes off and you hide in the dark hearing scary sounds outside.

I made the decision made to evacuate before the announcement for mandatory evacuation was issued for the area I live.  I used my computer to check hotels in the South Georgia and Florida panhandle areas and wanted to have a room booked at Marriott hotel before it sold out.  Once that was accomplished I sent out an email to my close family and friends telling them I was leaving and where I was going.  Then I started packing my car and preparing my home for leaving.  I also reviewed my driving route to NW avoiding Interstates which I figured would be crowded with other Floridians doing the same thing.  I filled up my plug in hybrid’s tank with gasoline and battery with electricity.  I spent the rest of Wednesday gathering items and packing  my car.  I got to sleep at 11 pm with my alarm set for 5 am..

On Thursday I awoke just before my alarm went off and showered before hitting the road at 6 am.  I encountered no heavy traffic  I got sleepy at 9:30 am and took a Brain Force tablet which started working an hour later, and helped me for the rest of the day.  I bought breakfast from a McDonald’s drive thru.  I stopped on at Alabama border to use the restroom but otherwise drove straight through with no other gas or food stops.

41.8 MPG
41.8 MPG on the drive out

Eight hours and forty one minutes after I left home, I arrived at my hotel in Spanish Fort, Alabama.  This is almost all of the way to Mobile, Alabama and 484 miles away from my home.  My Ford C-Max burned about eleven and a half gallons of gas and by driving the speed limit I managed to get 41.8 miles per gallon.  I saved almost all of the EV battery charge for later, and operated it in hybrid mode for nearly the entire trip.  I had about an 1/8 of a tank of gas left, but the low fuel light hadn’t yet turned on.

Fairfield Inn
Fairfield Inn Spanish Fort, Alabama

I checked into hotel and used a cart to move stuff from my vehicle into the room.  Three trips and I was done and able to relax.  My back and legs had some aches from lifting and sitting so it was beer time.  I took it easy and just watched the news on cable TV for the rest of the evening.  There were many other people in a similar situation there as well.

Home away from home
Home away from home

I spent all day Friday watching cable news reports about the storm hitting the Daytona Beach area.  Friday night I did some pre-packing and filled my car with gasoline.

Saturday morning I was up early and after loading my car and checking out of the hotel, was on the road at 7 am. I reversed the route that I had used when evacuating for the drive back.  I used waze on my cellphone during both drives and wrote about it on my blog.  I got some Arby’s for lunch on the way back, and stopped to fill up with gas before I got all of the way home, just in case there were still issues with gasoline availability or electrical power at home.  I ran into some stop and go traffic due to an intersection with a traffic signal that was out.  This added about an hour onto the total amount of time it took to drive home.  I switched to EV power and used my car’s battery during the time I was in the slow moving, bumper to bumper traffic jam.

43.7 MPG
43.7 MPG

Almost ten hours after I started, I was home.  I got my camera out to take pictures of damage at my home, and was very glad to not find anything worthy of a picture.  Other than tree limbs and palm fronds all over the yard, for the most part my house was the same as I left it.  I got even better gas mileage on the way home, in part because I used the EV batteries charge to cover the stop and go traffic jam and some other driving instead of using hybrid mode the entire drive.

I don’t regret spending the $200 on a hotel room for two nights, nor burning 22.5 gallons of gas while driving for about 19 hours total to be safe from what could have been a lot worse.  If the same thing happens in the future, I will likely do the same thing again.