Florida Oct 2024

Low Blow

This page will be a little different than the others for good reason.

Pre-holiday

We were booked to fly to Tampa airport then head the hour south to Anna Maria Island to go back to the usual AMIC complex. However, about 10 days before we were due to fly, Hurricane Helene blew through the elbow of Florida, arriving as a CAT 4 and causing large tidal surge in the AMI area, the devastation is severe in some places from photos we've seen since. This is the apartment complex on the left. Pool and lower areas are filled with sand.

Helene blew through on the Thursday and a couple of days later we were contacted by the Realters who we'd rented from. They said they would be in touch soon.

A couple of days later (less than a week before we fly) they contacted us and gave us the offer of a new date or refund. As we really like the place we opted to push the holiday back a year to late Sept 2025. So that left us with flights and nowhere to stay.

So we were onto the web to see what was possible in a rebooking situation. We has a overnight stay in a hotel near Tampa Airport already booked, so that was step one. However, as a lot of the damage was along the west coast of Florida, we wanted to get something over on the Atlantic side. We opted for a similar looking complex to AMIC but in a place called Palm Coast, north of Daytona.

That booked we couldn't get the whole set of dates that we had previously booked, so to break up the drive, we also booked an overnight in Lake Buena Vista in Orlando.

It was all booked up so Linda went to work packing and packing and packing...

Fly day

Sunday arrives and the taxi pulls up slightly early - big shout out to taxitolondonairports.co.uk as they were great at arranging the ride. We'd not booked something like that before and it worked a treat. we had access to the VIP check in at Heathrow from Virgin, very posh!

We had a couple of hours stay in the Virgin lounge (I think Graham Norton was sitting just along from us) then it was onto the flight and off to Tampa.

We arrived in Tamp in plenty of time, 30 minutes early to be honest. Our bags were off pretty quick and we were straight through security and off to the car.

We got ourselves a Ford Explorer (the middle of their larger SUV range) and I pre-paid for the tolls... We then went off to the first hotel: Hampton Inn & Suites Tampa Airport.

This was the more expensive of the two one-night stops, but it was near to the airport so a short drive for me.

Monday 7th

Overnight was OK, but oh-my the breakfast from the hotel was dire. They had some fruit, a odd cheese omelette thing and some other US type stuff, so we opted for out usual orange juice, cereal and toast. However, there was no milk at all about and when I asked someone I just got a shrug and 'no milk'. so forget, that, let's do the toast. It was one of those moving rail toasters where you dropped the slice on a moving conveyer. However, this one didn't seem to be moving very steadily and must have got stuck half way in as the smoke from the burning toast meant I quickly turned it off from the wall. So coffee it was then...

Milton who?

We quickly moved on to hotel two - driving along the I4. I'd worked out how to get the Waze app on my phone working on the car which seemed to come without any built-in sat-nav. Very odd for these days.

The I4 journey was slow because it was a main route for hurricane evacuations and Hurricane Milton was brewing well down in the Mexican side of the Gulf but was forecast to cross 'somewhere in Central Florida'. It was as though we'd just dodged one hurricane only for another to take its place. We were in the predicted path both in Orlando and in the Palm Coast resort, so it was more a question of timings as the hurricane was expected over land sometime on Wednesday or Thursday.

We reached the Fairfield Inn & Suites Lake Buena Vista and just left the cases in the room and went out to get a meal. We opted for the BJ Brewhouse which was nearby - very nice meal. It's a sports-bar type place. Linda got a cocktail served in a bath - the Unlucky Ducky.

Then it was back to the hotel and to bed so we were fresh for the next leg of our trip.

Tuesday 8th

Originally, the plan was to make the 1.5 hour trip straight as we let, but as we were in the heart of Disney, we opted to stop first at Disney Springs to have a wander about. It was oddly quiet for midday in a Disney area, even if this is just shopping. I guess Milton's imminent arrival was changing people's plans.

We stopped off at the Ghirardelli soda shop for a nice ice cream ($15 each!) and on the way out we found the bench we'd visited in 2002 on our first ever visit to Florida (it was called Downtown Disney back then).

Nostalgia photo incoming:

The route was farther along I4 then north on I95 at Daytona. The journey was busy but not as crowded as the day before.

We arrived just as the sun was setting so Linda snapped our first sunset photo.

We stopped off at the guard house for the complex to collect our parking pass, but the guy had no record of our stay - not a good start. Happily, he gave us a temporary pass for a day so we could get in and unload.

The place was very nice as we wheeled in the cases. However, we soon discovered we had no water in the place. We contacted Vacasa on the matter and I was asked to look for stop cocks or similar. Again not a great start, however I found the offending tap in the boiler cupboard so we had water again.

Dinner was in a small pizza place just down the road, Bronx Smoke house. Another nice meal. Below are lasagne balls.

Wednesday 9th

Milton continued onwards towards Florida. It was moving from CAT 4 to 5 and back to 4 with the expectation being an arrival near Tampa as a Cat 3. Depending on where the storm arrived Anna Maria Island might get hit with 10-15 feet of storm surge.

The weather where we were, on the northern edge of the track was for a lot of rain, possibly 12-24 inches plus CAT 1 level winds (75-94 MPH sustained).

We were getting heavy rain all day and so we didn't go outside.

Wednesday Night

Milton hit the west coast of Florida around 9pm as a CAT 3 (111–129mph) just south of Siesta Keys so AMI was saved the storm surge. Wind damage was strong though.

For us, it really got going after about 11pm when the wind started to howl and the rain intensified even more. As it was fully dark, there was nothing to do aside from listen and hope that nothing leaded. It wasn't surprising that we slept sporadically through the night indeed I was asleep when Linda mentioned that we'd lost power. It was just before 1am. The main wind seemed to hit us around 2am when the noise became even more intense but fortunately we had no obvious damage to the apartment apart from the power being out.

We were both relieved when daylight arrived and we could see about outside. Everything looked in one piece. We checked about and the whole building seemed to be off power. Well, that wasn't totally true as there was a diesel generator in the parking lot which had kicked in for emergency power to the lifts and the fire exits.

Thursday 10th

No power all day, so it was fortunate that I'd brought no less than four battery packs for charging phones etc. It did mean that we had to limit the phone/steam deck use. Outside the weather was still raining and windy, the coast was on storm surge watch (est. 3-5 feet). But fortunately the was no sign of any flooding in our immediate area. There's a river/channel behind the complex and that was very high, flooding around some trees on the waters edge, but not over the road.

There was a curfew in place in our area between 7pm and 7:30am to allow for the clean up of the area, so we kept indoors and had some cereal for tea. Not often we eat by torch light!

Thursday Night

We'd gone to bed really early, just after 8pm as we were just sitting in the dark (still no power) and we'd read as much of our Kindles as we could stand for the day. However, at 1am we were woken up by an ear-splitting alarm in the apartment. It wasn't clear initially where it was coming from and it wasn't the smoke alarm. Eventually I found it was a small red speaker in the wall which must have been connected to a building alarm.

I investigated outside - no sign of smoke or flames, no sign of flooding. Soon a fire truck arrived on scene and the firemen checked the building before turning off the alarm. The thought was that the diesel generator had run out or fuel (diesel wasn't available right after the storm) and the building alarm sounded because the lifts were out of operation and there was no exit signs in use now.

So that was a thing! The rest of the night was another fitful night - luckily it wasn't too hot outside so we had the bedroom external door open to cool the room somewhat.

Friday 11th

Normal weather has arrived, the wind had dropped and the storm surge watch was expiring. There was even blue sky in there too. We managed to watch the sunrise from the balcony as I'd got the patio furniture out of the apartment - when we'd arrived, we could see someone had brought in the balcony chairs into the spare room for safety. It was lucky that there were only two people staying there currently as the second bedroom was out or operation.

We popped out to Publix again mainly to see if we could find ice to sit in the fridge and keep it cool. We'd kept the door closed as much as possible, but it was slowly rising in temperature. We'd had no power now for 36 hours and counting.

After lunch we went for a stroll down to the sea's edge. It's still very choppy out to sea but the wind is dying off at last. The edge of the sea is very frothy - something we've seen before after storms in Florida.

It was whilst we were out on our stroll that we heard from another resident that the power had returned! That was around 3pm, so about 38 hours after it went out. By the time we arrived back at the apartment the aircon was happily blowing away - bliss!

Sat 12th

Now we could get into the normal swing of things again. With power, the fridge and freezer was back working. We could make ice again too. We'd not had a coffee either for a few days barring a small cold-coffee we'd picked up earlier on our shopping.

Linda started unpacking the cases - up until then she'd kept everything in the cases just in case we needed to move suddenly.

We spent some time on the balcony in the morning but as it's east facing it gets very hot early on and only past noon so we start to get shade - that's the opposite of Anna Maria Island which had a west view.

We knew that the pool area in the resort had been out of action since before the storm, indeed there was a padlock on the gate. However, today there was activity there as someone was fishing out some debris from the water and putting the furniture back out which had been put away prior to Milton. I suppose since the water filter had been off whilst the power was out was the main factor here, as the water itself looked fine from a distance.

Once the guys had finished their work we noticed they left it un-padlocked, so later in the afternoon we went down to try it out. It's not heated and as far as I could tell, it wasn't being heated either, so the water was, shall we say, cool. I took the plunge, but Linda decided to watch from the pool edge. Maybe tomorrow.

Evening time, now we had the luxury of working lights, we cooked one of the meals we'd picked up at Publix and watched the end of some TV which we'd been watching during the previous weeks (Slow Horses S4).

Sunday 13th

Another warm morning, no rain forecast for the next week it seems. This gave me the chance to try out my GoPro which I got for my Birthday (in 2 days time 😄). This has a 'star trail' feature which is different to the night-lapse mode I'd used on my old GoPro. Last night I set it up on the balcony with a power socket feed as the battery wouldn't last long enough.

I was pleased with the results.

Evening meal was out in a pizza/Italian place we'd not seen before, Mezzaluna Pizzeria. We both had a pasta meal but their portions were HUGE. Neither of us could finish.

It was based in a small Italian-like piazza area with residencies above the restaurants and shops. But even they must have had flooding as we spotted readied sandbags in one corner.

I also did another star video - this time the standard Night-lapse feature.

The 4K version of the video works really well.

Monday 14th

Today was the launch day for the Space-X rocket carrying the Europa Clipper towards Jupiter. We're about 90 miles NNW of Cape Canaveral space centre.

I was hoping we'd see the launch flame, but all we picked up was the smoke trail. If it had been a night launch we might have got better view. You can see the early smoke trail in the lower centre of this photo.
We didn't hear anything either.

We popped down to the shops to pick up on some supplies - we needed tissues as Linda's passed here cold onto me, so we both have drippy noses!

We did a pool dip for a hour or so then off to have a bite at a cheap-and-cheerful burger place Burger Bros. Quite nice burgers actually!

Tuesday 15th

My birthday. I was woken early with some happy birthday wishes from those who didn't realise we were 5 hours behind the UK. Still, they are nice to receive!

We were up in time to catch the sunrise at just before 7:30am

The plan for the day was to take it easy and then have a bigger meal out in the evening.

First off, we had to find the box of tissues we'd picked up in Publix as both of us have colds now. Mine is a streamer with bouts of dry coughing and explosive sneezing. Linda's already been through that stage and is on to the heavy mucus!

We thought it best to visit the pool early to see if that cleared the nasel passages and it did indeed work whilst we were down there. Yes, the water is still cold, so I doubt they've had the heating turned back on now as it's the end of the main holiday season, but once you were in it was fine.

During recent visits to the pool I'd noticed a large adult tortoise who prowls along the edge of the undergrowth near the pool. It's not possible to get to the pool edge itself as there are bars there, but it seems to like looking at the people passing by. It was back again today but quickly moved away. I'll try and get a photo once I'm in a position to.

Afternoon we had a small lunch then I went back to my game I've been working through. I brought by Steam Deck along with me plus its dock so I have it hooked up to the main TV in the apartment, I'm playing Grounded, a sort of survival/souls type game set in the back garden of a surburban house.

Linda was out on the balcony, ploughing through another book on her Kindle, she's finished five this holiday now (might be six of course by now).

Evening we drove 10 miles to the nearest Outback to have a meal there. I had to keep by tissues close as things haven't calmed down yet cold-wise.

It was a nice meal and the place wasn't too busy as it was a Tuesday.

Wednesday 16th

A pretty grim night last night as the cough came back with a vengeance at 2am. Thankfully it didn't disturb Linda too much (so she says).

There's a cold front coming down from Canada over the next couple of days, which is causing the temperature to drop by maybe 5-8'. So we've decided to head north through St. Augustine (which we plan to visit separately anyhow) and to an outlet mall there. Linda's not bought anything recently and she needs her fix!

I also took the chance to fill up the car again.

Shopping was a moderate success in that Linda picked up a couple of bargains.

My cold was taking it's toll though, so we didn't hang around too long, in fact aside from a quick stop off for a coffee, we headed back home and was back indoors by mid afternoon.

Dinner I cooked in the apartment where we watched some TV after the sunset had passed.

Thursday 17th

Not a great deal happened today. The weather is still cooler that recently whilst the cold front passes over us - it's hovering around 19-22'C so about a 5' drop from what we had earlier in the week.

Linda parked herself on the balcony to continue with her kindle. I was inside on the Steam Deck.

Lunch on the balcony then more of the same.

I'd been waiting for 7pm to roll around as that was supposed to be the time for another rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. As it turned out, I rechecked the schedules and it's been pushed back a day, so I've set an alarm for tomorrow evening instead.

Dinner was back at the Bronx Pizza down the road, we also stopped off at Publix to pick up a few bits we were low on.

It was also a bright 'Hunters' Moon tonight, which lit the sea up quite nicely.

Friday 18th

Today was a cooler, breezier day, the temperatures are still lower than normal and only expected to rise over the weekend.

We drove to the City of St Augustine which is 20 miles or so north along the coast. It's a very quaint old-town style location. It reminded us of places we seen in Boston like Cape Cod and Nantucket. Lots of older buildings of all types from the mid 17th century onwards. The place certainly leans into this a lot with lots of museums and attractions to look around the buildings.

We paid our $20 parking fee (!) in the main multi story there then got ourselves onto the small train ride that operated around town. It was the hop-on hop-off type which lasts 90 minutes. It's a good tool to get to know where everything is as we go along.

We jumped off after a few stops to have a look around one of the older churches in the city, it had an open day today. Supposed to be based on the St Marks Cathedral in Venice (which we've been in). It's a lot smaller of course!

Back onto the trolley to move on, this time we got off near the main square. The Biketoberfest event which is going on currently at Daytona has meant we've seen a lot of bikers out and about. Some had travelled north to visit St Augustine.

We had a quick stop off for a drink then moved on to complete the rest of the tour.

Just before heading home we stopped at a local eatery for a meal. This was the Mojo Old City BBQ. As you can see we were eating outside (and as we were early I'm sure we were one of the only people in the place at one point.

Also, sitting outside meant we had a good view of the old cemetery opposite.

Once back home, we waited a while until 19:31 when the Starlink rocket 8-19 launched. As it was dark by then, we could see the rocket flame as it passed over.

Linda took the photo below whilst I was taking the video.

photos.app.goo.gl/L42qDeo5YXThcjuVA

Saturday 19th

Sunrise was through the clouds today and indeed it stayed cloudy throught the day followed by rain in the afternoon. Despite the high pressure in the area (which is also blocking any potential hurricanes from approaching) we are still getting cloud and rain passing over.

This wasn't too much of an issue though as we had planned an indoors day today. As it was the weekend, I wanted to watch the football which was getting a showing over here (Spurs 4-1 West Ham) plus the F1 was on in Austin Texas so there was plenty to watch on TV.

Linda also sat for a lot of the day out on the balcony until the rain swept over.

Sunday 20th

Weather is getting warmer again, but there's still plenty of clouds about at the odd shower too. There's this 'King Tide' still going on so the sea had swallowed up what beach there is in our local area. We took a walk there before lunch just to get us out of the apartment for a while.

This poor tree is still feeling the effects of Milton and we're pretty sure it's got farther over as its root system are eroded away. This is at the front of the apartment block which we see when we leave the apartment's front entrance.

We walked over to the small pier which juts out into the sea a little way.

As you can see, there's no beach currently and there are rip-tide warnings still in place and up until mid-week.

In the afternoon, we watched the F1 race which was coming from Texas so was pretty good for us time-wise. I also had a stab at doing a timelapse on the go-pro using this rotating stand attachment I have now. It was going pretty well until I accidentally knocked the tripod :(

For food, we'd planned to go back towards St Augustine to visit the Longhorn up there. It was dark before we left to travel and the rain was coming down steadily. This made the drive a chore as, to but it bluntly, the wipers on our car are as much use as rolled up tissues. The salt residue on the windscreen doesn't clear the windscreen meaning oncoming lights just blur the whole view. Not nice to drive. Still it was only 30 minutes away and we got there in one piece.

It was a nice meal and wasn't overly expensive considering what we'd got. Linda's drink was a dragon fruit cocktail which she enjoyed.

Happily, the trip back was in the dry so was much easier.

Monday 21st

Much sunnier today. We face east in the apartment, so we get the sunrise full on. Today it was already up before we were out of bed. However, it was mostly cloudy early on as the photo shows.

Mind you, the sun soon burnt off a lot of that cloud and so we decided to return to the pool again. This time, we had a noodle which we'd picked up in Walgreens recently. It was still cold in the water as the sun's not had any chance recently to warm it up. Still we were down there for a good couple of hours until a rain shower sent us on our way back to the apartment.

I also managed to get a couple of photos of the tortoise who sits near the fence of the pool.

Heading back onto the apartment, we noticed that someone had parked up a Cybertruck in the corner. It was there earlier in the week then vanished. However, it's now returned and has a different paint job now over the usual stainless steel.

Very funky.

Tuesday 22nd

I was awake just before six this morning, so I set up my GoPro to capture the sunrise.

We had plans to visit Daytona today, just to go to the shops nearby mind.

I had a bit of a headache most of the day, so although we did the trip, is was probably shorter than usual.

We passed the main Daytona speedway stadium. It's not as built up as I expected, just along once edge it seems, but the place is still huge.

Once back home, Linda noticed that the next planned Starlink rocket launch had been put back a hour or so into the evening. It's currently scheduled for 7:48 tonight. So I took the opportunity to have a short nap to sort out my head. Meantime, Linda spent some time out on the balcony - she snapped a (double?) rainbow over the sea.

The Starlink launch was pushed back to tomorrow around 5pm so it'll be a daylight launch assuming the weather holds. Evening meal was cooked in the apartment and we watched some TV for a while.

Wednesday 23rd

Linda wasn't feeling too good this morning. Possibly something she ate yesterday. So we stayed in during the morning. However, after lunch she felt better so we decided to visit the mearby State Park which until recently had been closed due to storm damage. We noticed that it had reopened yesterday, so we drove the short distance over to the Washington Oaks Gardens State Park. The attendant told us that most of the park was closed still, but we decided to have a look anyway. It wasn't too long before we noticed taped off areas, indeed the whole walk probably only took 10 minutes total.

So instead, we drove a little farther down to a beach area which was much better - unlike the beach in front of our complex (which is mostly rocks) this has actual sand you can get to!

There was also a pumpkin patch right next to part of the beach. You picked a pumpkin based on the size then paid via a QR code!

We noticed that there was a sandbag collection area near there which was for the public to pick their own sandbags for potential flooding in the area. We saw a few houses which had lost part of their fencing due to Milton.

Back at the apartment it was still warm out, so we went down to the pool for a hour or so. This meant we watched the 6-16 rocket launch from the pool side.

Once back in the apartment, we headed to a sports bar called Houligan's.

Thursday 25th

We spent the late morning over at the beach, the weather has calmed down a lot and it was quite pleasant to sit there for a couple of hours.

Then is was back to the apartment for some lunch as it's only a few minutes away. We cooled there for a short time then headed down to the pool for the late afternoon sun. I do some laps in the pool then grab my kindle for a bout of buoyant reading. I'm halfway through Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Linda retires to the sunbed during this time.

Once back at the apartment Linda did a hour starting to collect our belongings back together ready for packing things tomorrow.

Evening meal was at the Mezzaluna Pizzeria place again - this is the place with the large portions. Even though we scaled back the meal it was still not possible to finish. They have amazing garlic bread though!

Friday 25th

This is our last full day on Palm Coast. Again the sky was almost clear of clouds as the sun came up. We had breakfast out on the balcony, but it soon becomes very hot out there, so we creep back inside.

Linda pottered about packing some more items ready for our departure tomorrow. The flight out to Tampa took off on time (after having an issue yesterday which meant it returned to London) so hopefully any interruption caused by that issue are over now.

After lunch on the balcony, we went down to the pool for our last dip.

With the weather so calm today, the butterflies were out in force again. It's been delightful to swim along and have the butterflies swoop past. No sign on the tortoise today, but I did see a 2 inch mantis crawl its way along the edge of the pool. Each time I swam to the end of the pool, it would stop and turn its enormous eyes in my direction. It took maybe 5 minutes to eventually reach the edge of the pool area whereby it promptly disappeared.

A little bit more packing once we'd returned to the apartment. I snapped our last sunset from the balcony out the front of the apartment.

Tonight, as is tradition, we headed out for our final holiday meal. Tonight we're going back to Outback.

Saturday 26th

Packing up day. We were up and getting ready for 6am. Checkout time is 10am.

As usual, we start out pottering about slowly putting things together and by 9:30 it's crazy chicken time. Fortunately, the cases all packed up and closed and I weighed them all with our travel scales and they were all under the limit.

We set off heading south and passed through Flagler Beach (somewhere we'd not been this holiday). It seemed a nice place but you could see its pier had been damaged. I found out later that this was due to Hurricane Ian in 2022.

We then drove off down the I95 south to Orlando and back to Disney Springs for a rest and another Sundae. Compared to the last time we were here (1 day before Milton passed over) it was very busy and back to how we'd expect it to be. Last time it was very quiet.

Then it was off along I4 westbound back to Tampa. We arrived fairly early based on the car return time. So we stopped off at IHOP for something to eat. For some reason we were put well away from everyone else!

The car was dropped off and we went into Tampa airport. Sadly the Virgin desk was closed, so we just camped out nearby for a while until it finally opened. Bags dropped off and then we headed over to the lounge which itself was dead. There was only three other people using the lounge but we had plenty of hours to kill.

Finally our flight was called so we boarded - the terminal was almost deserted as it was nearly 10:30pm.

Flight home was on a Airbus A330neo so relatively new plane. Flight was quite smooth although sleep wasn't happening for either me or Linda. Maybe a hour or so each.

We landed at 11:15am, after the clocks had gone back. Bags all arrived quickly. Taxi picked us up and we then took almost two hours to get home due to heavy traffic in central London (Trafalgar Square was closed we think).
Finally home!

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