You might have expected that this entry would be from Charleston, South Carolina - after all, that is where we said we were going. When we woke up this morning it was to news that Hurricane Matthew had devastated the Bahamas, Haiti and Cuba and was headed towards us! After Smart Traveller alerts to evacuate the coastal areas of Georgia and South Carolina we packed our bags and headed out of Savannah. Originally for this trip we intended to travel south to New Orleans at the beginning of the trip. After advice from our friends Bob and Sally Konowicz that we should go north first to avoid the hurricane season in the south, we changed our plans and went north first. You can see how that worked out for us! As we left Savannah there were signs of the expected hurricane beginning to appear. The radio had hurricane updates every 15 minutes or so informing listeners of sporting events that had been cancelled. Evacuation routes were broadcast with the times that residents should leave each area. From 3pm, Interstate 16 would close to traffic going east towards Savannah and both sides of the road would be used to take traffic west. There were queues beginning to form at service stations and people were short tempered as they waited, people were also filling plastic jerry-cans with fuel which only increased peoples frustration. Throughout the day people were ringing radio talk back shows reporting shortages of water, milk, bread and other essential items at supermarkets. We passed a steady stream of emergency vehicles, police, ambulance and fire trucks heading towards Savannah. We also saw many vehicles equipped with cherry-pickers and lights heading there as well. We were glad we were getting out early! We did decide on a quick visit to Charleston as we had to go in that direction to leave the area. We collected a couple of brochures from our breakfast stop and, low and behold, there was another ship worth a visit in Charleston. The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, commissioned in 1943, was tied up at Patriots Point. We didn't go for a tour as the visitor's centre was deserted due to the approaching Hurricane.

As the weather was looking more and more ominous we abandoned any other plans for Charleston and headed inland and north to make sure we would remain as far away from Matthew as we could get. We drove through the town of Florence, South Carolina but it didn't even have a Duomo let alone a statue of David!


Fayetteville ended up being the stop for the night, not for any other reason than it was out of the Hurricane danger zone and would be an early day to plan what we would do next. Greg didn't mind this spot at all because he found an eat-in Pizza Hut just across the road from our hotel, these have almost (if not totally) disappeared in Australia and Greg insists that Pizza Hut pizzas are still the best!