WorldTravelReynolds

That blue dot is us! The better news? It moved a little south and we were spared.

Today we are in observation mode, waiting on Hurricane Ian to move through. This has been the slowest moving and most massive hurricane we have seen since Hurricane Gaston hit Richmond Virginia in 2004. It stopped over the James river near downtown Richmond and just parked for what seemed like forever. Enough so that while working downtown, it normally takes me 20 minutes to get home but so much water and so much traffic, I wasn’t home for hours.

Rain and winds picking up.

The heaviest-hit location was downtown Richmond, where 20 blocks of the city were under water. In the historic district, close to where I worked, a brick building collapsed and dozens of other structures received flood damage as water reached 10 ft in some places. Cars were floating and crashing them into buildings. I took lots of pictures of these the next day. Interstate 95 in the city was closed as flash flooding caused 20 traffic accidents. Along the James River, water rescuers in boats helped people stranded in their cars.  Over $20 million in damage and nine people were killed. A very sad day.

Powers out so this is dinner

and the cook!

Being in Richmond, we thought we were safe from Hurricanes being that we were 100 miles from the ocean but I guess we were wrong! Back to our current hurricane. We have been watching the news over the last few days and it now looks like the eye will pass through about 100 miles from here, just south of Tampa. This will definitely be a welcome relief but looking at the size of this thing, I’m not so sure it won’t hit us. As we are sitting on pins and needles, the wind is picking up and our power started dipping.

Chuck said these colors in the sky weren’t a good sign.

It finally went out around 2:30 pm today. We will be ok out on the Lanai without light until it gets dark. The wind was loud and the rain came down in sheets. That swing? It hasn’t budged! Unbelievable. It must be in a hurricane hole itself. I was so sure we would see some action out of that thing. It really let me down!

Most of our information was from TV or our phones. Florida did a good job in communication

Tonight we fixed some hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill. I don’t eat meat anymore so Chuck calls my hamburgers Phoburgers. They taste surprisingly decent and they fix them on the ship for me too. We watched some shows on my iPad until it was time for bed. The storm is loud but it appears its not going to hit us too hard. We did hear some limbs fall on the house just before we went to bed. That was a little scary, thinking about the trees near our home. So, we will see what tomorrow holds and hope our home and neighborhood prevails.

May God bless and keep you safe.

Chuck & Lea Ann