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.
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.
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.
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.
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.