to Milton, FL

Carol fixed me a nice breakfast this morning to get me on my way.  Unfortunately something, either this morning or yesterday, gave me a persistent stomachache in addition to the lower-backache I'd picked up in the strawberry field, so it was an uncomfortable ride.

I followed the route Bruce suggested around Pensacola to the west and north, but even that far from the coast I saw lots of hurricane damage.  The sides of the roads were littered with asphalt shingles and vinyl siding, even as construction workers were scrambling to put new flimsy shingles and siding in their places.

It was still early in the afternoon when I reached my campground for the night, but due to the back pain I lay down and read rather than doing any transcription.

My neighbors in the campground were a young couple from Kansas City who came down "the day after the hurricane" because he's a licensed tree surgeon and can make upwards of $500 a day cleaning up after storms.  But when they got here they found a huge bureaucracy designed to protect the hurricane victims from price gouging, and by the time he had gotten himself properly re-licensed and certified and insured, the work was mostly done.  So he's been doing roofing ever since, and the two of them are scraping by, living in a tent between a highway interchange and a cell phone tower, and they're planning to go home in a few days.

58.4 mi