After packing up Louie and Grace (our cat evacuees from Tampa), I drove by the office to say good-bye to my parents and got on the road around 10am.  I was driving “Baby Honda” – the Honda Civic my parents bought for me in 2001 and that I gave back to my parents when we left in July.  They originally planned to sell “Baby Honda”, but decided to keep it (and share it with me when I’m in the US) once they saw it’s great condition.

Traffic was slow until Locust Grove, where Waze recommended that I exit Interstate-75 to avoid a 95 minute delay.  I exited and stopped at a Walmart along the detour shortly after noon to get some energy drinks.

My next stop was at 3:20pm in Valdosta for a meal at Chick-fil-a and 7.2 gallons of gas.  The cats got a bit too hot in “Baby Honda” even with the windows open, so I stopped about 30 minutes later at the Florida state line to allow them to calm down.

I stopped once more at a rest area about an hour outside Tampa before reaching JT’s dad’s house at 8:30pm.

The drive was a bit rougher than usual due to the extra traffic of people who evacuated from Florida before Hurricane Irma returning.  Traffic was congested throughout most of the drive.  I listened to four Abroaders podcasts and about six Mad Fientist podcasts on a portable speaker during the drive.

Grace spent most of the drive sitting in her carrier on the front passenger seat.  She rested her head outside the carrier until Valdosta, but then she acted very lethargic the rest of the drive.  Louie howled loudly for the first 90 minutes of the drive, but then he calmed down and only occasionally howled.  Louie tried out many places in “Baby Honda” – on the backseat floorboard, on the backseat, in the litter box, and on the frontseat next to Grace.  He was insistent about trying to get into the driver’s foot well, and tried this every hour or so.  He certainly made the drive more interesting – but he did surprisingly well considering that he’s 15 years only and he’d never left Tampa before this trip.