Day 3 - Saturday 31 August

One of the first things we do is to check on the strength of and projected track of Hurricane Dorian and each time we do now, the prospects for us are improving.

This is what we woke up to, now a Category 4 Hurricane (sustained wind speeds of between 130 mph and 156 mph) but it now looks as if it'll turn north before it gets to us. They all turn north in the end, it just depends on how far south they started and at what point they start to turn.

We got going and set off for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, a popular local eatery which presents itself as a place from the 'good old days'.  They confirm that by being one of the few eating places with no guest wifi!

We each had different items from the menu and thought it was generally good value, although the service was painfully slow.

This was mine - a 'smokey breakfast'

Joyce is eating hers. I also got with mine something more akin to afternoon tea so I asked if I could take it away.  The nice lady brought me a box plus a further two scones - 'biscuits' here - plus some extra jam so I'm able to share it with my holidaymaking colleagues later!

Elizabeth had one of her favourites

I posed in a rocking chair - pity we don't have a lovely front verandah at the villa!

These are the latest weather projections - 

This is what they call the 'spaghetti' - each strand is from a separate weather computer so you get the picture of an overall trend

At the moment the hurricane is hammering the Bahamas.

Monday at 11 am

We're a little to the west of Kissimmee

The weather today - all in Fahrenheit. We're north-east of Lakeland

And this is the forecast for the next few days - 

And this is what it looks like now from the living area of the house:

On our way back we had a drive round the other six communities that make up West Haven. All the normally locked entrance gates have been left open until the threat of the hurricane has passed so that the emergency services can get unfettered access to properties.

Have just seen one of these at the back of the villa

Photo by Sharon LaPlante for plantrealflorida.org

It's a Gulf Fritillary.  I thought from its markings that it was likely to be one of the fritillary clan but I'd never seen one like this at home when I was a lad chasing butterflies!  Such beauty.

We enjoyed our tea of scones/biscuits and jam/jelly - and some had toast as well! - and then we set off for Disney Springs, aka Disney Market Place and/or Downtown Disney - how many more times can something be re-branded?!

We had a good look round for an hour or two and got our free chocolate from Girardelli's.  We also managed to bump into the Strolling Piano man who was playing with gusto before moving on, but there wasn't any 'moving ivy' this time.

We then took advantage of the heads up we'd got from Chris that Domino's were doing a half price offer for online orders, so the evening was rounded off with pizza, red wine and a chaser of Diet Coke.

And so to bed, with Hurricane Dorian becoming more stable to track and continuing to pose less and less of a threat to inland areas such as ours.  It is now ravaging the Bahamas with winds of around 140 mph to 150 mph near the centre of the storm.