St. Pete Beach, FL and Jacksonville, FL (Hoteled)
September 25-28, 2022
Something that I really miss is the independence of having a car so we don’t have to depend on someone to transport us. Kent Island does not have a lot (if any) Ubers on Sunday morning. We learned this the hard way when we tried to get to the airport. I thought I had a ride set up but apparently he overslept. I can’t even express how frustrated and dismayed I was: there were no Uber drivers available through the app. Luckily, we have an Uber driver in the marina and were able to get him to take us to the airport at the last minute.
This should have been a clue about the next few days, by the way…
The workshop provider let us know that the three-day workshop would be a two-day workshop due to the possibility of bad weather. I was able to change our flight home to Wednesday, early afternoon, rather than Wednesday night.
Sunday in St. Pete was pretty lovely, although there were some patchy clouds. We were able to have dinner in one of our favorite places and walk back to the hotel at sunset.
On Monday at our morning break, we learned that the workshop would be shortened even more – we would end at 2:00PM on Tuesday. I managed to change our flight home to Tuesday night so we could get out early.
By lunch on Monday, we learned that the governor was going to order an evacuation the next morning and that we would be shortening the workshop so that it ended that day. We would work with our participants to come up with some blended learning activities to meet their hours. There were no earlier flights available, but the weather didn’t look that bad.
By 5:00 PM on Monday afternoon, we learned the governor was going to declare evacuations at 6:00 PM. This is when the emergency alerts began on all of our phones. We knew that we would still have time to get home, since we had a flight at about 7:00PM on Tuesday.
Afternoon clouds rolled in as we walked to dinner – but this happens A LOT in Florida!
We had a short torrential downpour and then it cleared up.
As we were waiting for the rain to stop, I got a text from the airline letting me know that our flight on Tuesday evening had been cancelled. A second text alerted me that we were rescheduled for Thursday (another change!). We learned that the Tampa airport was closing at 6PM on Tuesday.
John is a true logistics guy – he realized our best bet to get home was to rent a car and drive to Jacksonville where we could grab a flight home. I made a car reservation for a rental place that’s really close to our hotel. The airline was great and changed our flights yet again – this time we would fly on Wednesday late afternoon from Jacksonville (right – another change!). My friend, Eve, was also able to arrange to fly home to Michigan from Jacksonville on Wednesday.
Something must have told John that we needed to check our car rental reservation so we headed out a few hours early on Tuesday. We learned that the rental location in St. Pete Beach had closed without letting any of its customers know. Back to that sense of frustration and dismay that started this trip.
Eve had the good idea to Uber to Tampa airport to get a rental car, especially after we learned that the only car rental place on St. Pete Beach had a pretty high upcharge for one-way rentals.
We were lucky that the St. Pete Beach Uber driver lived on the island since only residents were able to get on the island. We could see the clouds moving in, but there wasn’t much rain or even high winds. It’s odd to see how deserted the roads at the beach can get.
Although we hit some traffic pockets, our ride across central Florida was pretty uneventful. There are some rolling hills there with cows and horses. There are also multiple prisons, too.
On Wednesday, Jacksonville was starting to get some rain and wind. John heard a rumor at the hotel registration desk that the airport was going to close at noon but this was unfounded, thank goodness.
After returning the car, we spent a lot of time in the Jacksonville airport – long enough to do some sightseeing.
We had to travel through some pretty bumpy bands to get from Jacksonville to the Atlanta airport. Seeing the sun shining in Atlanta was such a relief!
We arrived back on Lailia around midnight on Wednesday. The ratio of travel to workshop was way off this time but we’ll try it again in November (out of the hurricane danger time). We’re hoping our Florida and South Carolina friends are able to get through Hurricane Ian with minimal damage. We do know a few folks who have boats and houses on the gulf side of Florida.
Life on Lailia 