Our RV park is on Grassy Key in Marathon, Florida, which is 1/2 way down the Florida Keys south of Miami.
The Florida Keys is a string of islands over 125 miles long extending southwest from the mainland of Florida. The highest point on the islands is 18' above sea level but the average height above sea level is closer to 4'.
One of the big past times in the Florida Keys is watching the weather during hurricane season which runs from June 1 through November 30 every year.
In past years since we have started calling this place home, we have watched large storms heading toward us but they always seem to veer away and miss us.
We have been advised to evacuate in the past and when the Sheriff's Office says to leave, we leave.
This year, we started seeing a storm way out to the south, which was forecast to come our way. Our phone Apps really do a good job of keeping us posted.
This was the first indication of potential paths for what turned into Hurricanes Irma and Lee, as well as the current location of Hurricane Harvey that eventually hit the Texas coast.
As time passed, Hurricane Harvey did hit and devastate Texas and it really caught everyone's attention here in Florida.
Several days into the news coverage showing the horrible damage inflicted on Texas, the weather updates started getting serious for us.
Now Irma had formed into a huge hurricane and looked like it was heading straight for Key West, which is only 58 miles southwest of us.
We started packing up our stuff into the motorhome and continued to watch.
That is where the problem lies. The weatherman keeps changing his mind. We know it isn't really his fault, but with the technology available to the weather men today, they can see subtle changes in the weather worldwide that might have an effect on our weather but things can change over England that have an effect thousands of miles away that just can't be predicted.
Another update on the forecast track looked like this.
They moved the forecast track quite a bit to the east and suggested that it might continue east depending on how Irma interacted with Hurricane Lee, which was out over the Atlantic.
Maybe we will luck out and the storm will bypass us to the east.
Well, as we are sure you know, it didn't work out like that and it became apparent that we were going to have to evacuate before Hurricane Irma arrived.
You may not know that Suzie and I used to work here at Grassy Key RV Park on a part-time basis. Originally, I worked 2 days in the office, answering phones, taking reservations and holding down the fort while the managers had a couple of days off each week.
The rest of the time, Suzie and I would work in the park, caring for the landscaping and fixing broken things. After a while, I stopped working in the office and we spent 3 or 4 half days working out in the park.
Several years ago, we stopped working in the park and Stacey and her husband Robbie ended up taking our place. Last year, Robbie passed away but Stacey has stayed on working in the park.
Because it was now about 3 days before the hurricane was supposed to make landfall in the Florida Keys, we were asked to help Stacey get all of the things in the RV park packed away before we all evacuated.
We spent 2 very long days moving picnic tables, sealing up the clubhouse and office, moving all of the patio and pool and beach furniture to sheltered locations and generally battening down the hatches.
After getting everything ready I took pictures and video of the entire property, just in case bad things really did happen and the owners of the park needed them for insurance purposes.
This is the Silver Buttonwood hedge and sign at the front of the RV park.
This is the entrance driveway to the RV park and Stacey's 5th-wheel hooked up and ready to go.
This is our beautiful swimming pool where we cool off every day after working in the scorching, humid sunshine.
This is the "hurricane hole" where we stored our jet skis, the park's equipment trailer filled with beach loungers and a guest's boat.
The guest had evacuated his 5th-wheel trailer back to his home near Tampa and had planned to come back the next day to get his brand new boat, but couldn't get back because all of the evacuations had dried up the fuel supply and his truck didn't have a big enough fuel tank to make the round trip without refueling and NO diesel fuel was available.
We tied all of the furniture to the trailer and then tied the trailer to the trees. We tied the jet skis and the boat to their trailers and then tied the trailers to the trees.
The theory on storing the boats this way is that they are protected from the wind down in the hole nestled in the dense trees. They shouldn't blow away if the wind comes from the direction it is supposed to be coming from.
The storm surge is what we have to worry about so we tie the boats to the trailers and the trailers to the trees so as the tide rises, the boats will float and bring the trailers with them. They won't float away because they are tied to the trees so, theoretically, when the tide subsides, even if the boats drifted around a little, they would land on their trailers which would land on their wheels and everything would be OK.
At the end of the rush to get things packed, it became time for us to get ready to leave.
We decided that since the news was reporting extremely heavy traffic from all of the people who were evacuating south Florida, we decided to go to bed early and then leave at 3:00 am the following day which was the day before the hurricane was supposed to get here.
Stacey got her 5th-wheel hooked up to her truck. This was her first time doing this since Robbies' passing and she did a great job.
Then we helped Jack, the RV park manager, get his 5th-wheel ready to go. This was more complicated because his 5th-wheel had not been moved in years and we had trouble getting the slides in and the sewer disconnected, but we finally got it done.
Then all we had to do was move our motorhome into a pull-through site from our back-in site and hook up our tow car and we would be ready for a middle of the night "bug out".
The motorhome started right up but wouldn't move because the leveling jacks wouldn't work right. We tried everything we could think of to get the jacks up and the air bag suspension back into operation, but it would not work. We kept thinking, "THERE IS A BIG HURRICANE COMING AND WE DON'T HAVE TIME TO MESS AROUND WITH THIS!!"
I finally gave up trying to figure out the problem and called the manufacturer of the leveling system. A very nice man in Tech Support spent well over 2 hours on the phone with me talking me through several troubleshooting procedures before he finally decided that the key pad to the leveling system was bad.
He offered to overnight me a new one but I told him I wasn't sure there would be anything here after the hurricane hit and besides that, all mail and parcel delivery had stopped and all of the delivery people should already be evacuated.
He then talked me through a procedure to bypass the whole system and trick the motorhome into raising the jacks and filling the air bag suspension so we could at least drive down the road.
After about 4 hours, in the 90º heat that felt like well over 100º, I finally completed the necessary rewiring and we were ready for our early morning departure.
We were going to all caravan to an RV park that is located on high ground, about 150' above sea level, which is high for Florida, in about the middle of the state. I was going to drive our motorhome pulling our Honda CR-V car, Stacey was going to drive her truck pulling her 5th-wheel, Jack was going to drive his truck pulling his 5th-wheel and Suzie was going to drive Jack's car so it wouldn't be damaged in the projected flood that was headed our way.
That is when Jack, the manager, told us he wasn't leaving until daylight. We figured that was because his trailer was so old that the lights wouldn't work anymore and there hadn't been time to address that problem, even if we had known about it.
We told him we were leaving at 3:00 am anyway to beat the traffic and that we would meet him at the RV park in Lake Placid, Florida where we figured we could ride out whatever hurricane was left after it came that far inland.
At 3:00 am, we cranked up our engines and Suzie, Stacey and I headed out. It was a beautiful, calm night and we were the only ones on the road. It was hard to believe that in less than 48 hours, all hell was supposed to let loose on our beautiful islands.
After about 2 1/2 hours of pleasant, traffic free driving, Suzie called me on the telephone and reported that she and Stacey had pulled over because Stacey had a flat tire on her trailer.
I turned around and by the time I got back to them, Stacey had already made phone calls and had emergency road service on the way to change the tire.
While we were waiting for the tow truck, Stacey crawled under the trailer and got the spare tire down so we would be ready when the tow got there.
Finally, the guy arrived. Notice I didn't say the tow truck arrived.
Some Spanish speaking guy rolled up in a little compact car and said he was there to change the tire. Then he opened his trunk and pulled out the smallest hydraulic floor jack I have ever seen and an X handle lug wrench. He also had a set of jumper cables and a gas can in the trunk and that was the extent of his roadside assistance equipment.
I told him that while we had been waiting for him to arrive, Stacey had gotten the spare tire out and we had checked the pressure and found that it only had 40 psi instead of the 80 psi it should have had.
Since he didn't speak English, it took a lot of shouting and arm waving to determine that he didn't know what I was talking about and certainly didn't have an air compressor with him.
I was able to dig out our air compressor and start our generator and get her tire aired up while the guy tried to jack up the VERY heavy trailer. His jack wouldn't lift high enough for the tire to clear the ground. He wanted to know if we had blocks of wood to shim up the jack. Stacey found some blocks that she uses under her stabilizer jacks and that was enough to get the tire off the ground.
He was finally able to bust the lug nuts loose with his lug wrench and pretty quickly, we were on our way.
About an hour down the road, Suzie called again. She wasn't sure, but she thought Stacey may have blown another trailer tire and thought there might be smoke coming from underneath the trailer.
We pulled over and, sure enough, another tire had let go.
Stacey had checked the air pressure on the tires before we started the trip and they were all at 80 psi and even though the tread looked like new, the sidewalls must have just been weather checked enough that they were not up to the trip.
This time, Stacey had a little more trouble arranging for roadside assistance because she also needed to have a new tire brought out.
Within an hour, a real roadside assistance tire guy arrived and somehow managed to get the old tire off the wheel and then mounted a brand new tire and off we went.
This poor tire guy had to really work to bust both beads off of the rim and then wrestle the remains of the tire off of the rim.
While we were waiting for the roadside assist to arrive, Stacey burned up the phone lines trying to find a tire shop that had the correct size tires because it was becoming apparent that her tires were not up for the trip. She finally found a tire shop that didn't have any tires in stock but expected the resupply truck in an hour or two with the correct size.
By the time we got to the tire shop, the new tires had arrived and Stacey bought 4 new tires for the 5th-wheel and they placed the other, roadside assist tire in the spare position.
Off we went and finally arrived at our RV park in Lake Placid. What should have been an easy 4 hour drive had taken 12 hours.
An hour later, Jack arrived and we all settled in to wait our the hurricane.
The next morning, after watching the weather channel, we were standing around outside of our campsite wondering if the hurricane would continue east like they thought or if it would turn in a more westerly direction and run right over us.
While we were standing there discussing it, a deputy sheriff happened by and we stopped him to see if he had any more information than we had.
He said that if he lived in a house on wheels like we did, he would be heading out because their morning briefing had made it sound like the hurricane was headed straight for Lake Placid.
We were gone in 10 minutes.
As soon as we were ready to go, Jack and Stacey both requested that we stop at the first available gas station because they both needed diesel fuel before we went much further.
Every time we came to a town, there were very long lines at each gas station and each gas station was already out of diesel fuel.
About 1 1/2 hours into the trip, I saw Jack turn off of our street onto a side street without any explanation. Traffic was extremely heavy and we had to go about 10 minutes down the road before we found a parking lot big enough for our motorhome and Stacey's big rig. Then, we called Jack and found out that he had run out of fuel and had coasted off the main street and was now blocking a street and the main entrance into Home Depot, causing a huge traffic jam.
Suzie and I drove back to help him while Stacey stood guard over our rigs.
When we got to Jack, we found that he had already made arrangements for a tow truck and it was on the way. Suzie and I scouted around and found a big Kohls Department Store parking lot on the other side of Home Depot where the tow truck could move Jack's rig. Next door to Kohls was a Holiday Inn Express.
When the tow truck got there, he didn't have any diesel fuel so he towed Jack's rig to the Kohls parking lot and then Jack got a room at the Holiday Inn for the night.
Jack then called around and found a big rig towing company that had diesel and made arrangements for them to come to his truck and help him get it started. He then planned on staying in the hotel for that night because that looked like a safe place to stay for the hurricane.
In the meantime, the hurricane had slowed down and was still on such a wobbly course that the weatherman still didn't know where it was going to go.
Suzie, Stacey and I headed north and ended up in Ocala, which is also in the center of the state but further north. That should give the hurricane enough time over land to dissipate and just be a rain storm by the time it got to us.
As we drove north, we felt like we were in a zombie apocalypse movie. The roads northbound were jammed and people were honking and passing on the shoulder and passing on the grass beside the shoulder and it was a mess and almost scary.
The cars coming toward the camera are all headed for the freeway we are on. The people heading away from the camera all just got off the freeway and are in line for a gas station that is way out there at the end of the line of cars.
In this picture, we see a clown on the right shoulder who was passing everyone until the shoulder ended at a bridge so he has to jam back into the line of cars he wanted to pass and they don't want to let him in.
The next morning, when we woke up in Ocala, we found that the storm had turned again and was now expected to pass west of Tampa.
We figured that was a bit too close so we had to figure out where to go next. We decided that if we went north, the storm would probably turn wherever we went because it seemed to be chasing us so we decided to head towards the Orlando area and get further inland from where they were projecting the path of the storm to be.
We ended up at a nice RV park on the west side of Kissimmee, near Orlando.
We then went to Walmart for a casual afternoon of shopping for any last minute emergency supplies like Hershey bars and red licorice we might need.
As we walked through the front door, we were greeted by security guards who told us the doors would close at 1:30PM and the store would close at 2:00PM. It was now 1:15 so we felt lucky to get in.
We learned an important lesson about hurricane preparation. One person should grab a basket and get in line while the other person gets the goodies.
We didn't know about that concept and went about our normal shopping.
When we finished our gathering, we headed for the check stands . . . . . . . . . . OOPS!!!
After arriving at the front of the store, we then had to turn around and do the walk of shame to the back of the store which was where the end of the line was!
That was where we got the first-hand look at the proper way to do hurricane shopping.
One person held the place in line and guarded the basket while the rest of the team foraged through the store, picking the shelves clean.
We thought we had lucked out and gotten in a line where the people in front of us only had a few things to buy, but by the time we worked our way up to the front of the store, ALL of the baskets were filled to overflowing and in some cases one of the runners had to go get another basket which they also filled.
This was the view from the back of the store when we got in line. We are behind the girl in the white shirt.
Her basket was filled to overflowing before we got to the cash register.
It kind of reminded me of an old TV game show.
We finally made it through the line and the one thing that really struck us was how friendly and nice everyone was. No one cutting in line, no yelling or any other problems. It was almost a party atmosphere, . . . . . . . . . . . . . except for the 45 minute wait in line.
After the ordeal, we came back to the RV park and got another weather update.
The storm had turned and was expected to pass directly over us around 2:00 am as at least a Category 2 hurricane. So much for planning.
Suzie and I then moved our motorhome to a site where we thought we would be pointing into the wind because we figured if the motorhome could drive down the freeway at 75 mph, it ought to do OK with high winds as long as we weren't sideways to the wind.
Stacey was so exhausted that she decided to just stay where she was.
As night fell, the wind started to increase and the weather forecast became more confident that the storm was heading our way.
We were at the blue dot on the following picture and you can see the eye of Hurricane Irma heading right at us. This was at 8:36 pm.
We went to bed but things started to really rock and roll. At 10:20 pm this is what it looked like. Our emergency weather radio kept going off warning of tornados sprouting up in front of the hurricane. Great. . . . . . it is pitch black outside and you would never see a tornado coming!
At 12:58 am, we were really rocking and rolling and the wind noise and rain was VERY loud.
At 1:49 am, it suddenly went quiet as the eye passed over us.
After the eye passed, the wind picked up again but the rain wasn't pounding on the roof as hard as before and it wasn't nearly as violent for the rest of the night.
When we went outside in the morning, we discovered that we had correctly pointed into the wind and the big tree behind us confirmed that the wind was blowing away from the motorhome.
When we went outside in the morning, we discovered that we had correctly pointed into the wind and the big tree behind us confirmed that the wind was blowing away from the motorhome.
News reports we watched that morning confirmed that the hurricane did strike the Florida Keys and that there was wide spread destruction.
The reports told us that no one was being allowed to return to the Keys right then and we decided to stay put until things stabilized down there.
In the next chapter, we will tell you about our wait near Orlando and our return to the Keys.
We have hundreds of pictures of the destruction and I am trying to find the best ones to show you just how amazing the destruction was.
In the meantime, we hope all is well with you and you are starting to enjoy the cooler temperatures and end of summer,
Tom & Suzie
The reports told us that no one was being allowed to return to the Keys right then and we decided to stay put until things stabilized down there.
In the next chapter, we will tell you about our wait near Orlando and our return to the Keys.
We have hundreds of pictures of the destruction and I am trying to find the best ones to show you just how amazing the destruction was.
In the meantime, we hope all is well with you and you are starting to enjoy the cooler temperatures and end of summer,
Tom & Suzie
