As you read this my wife and I will be on our way to the gorgeous white sand and blue waters of Gulf Shores, Alabama.

We really lucked out on this one. Gulf Shores is just a hop, skip and a jump from Hurricane Helene's landfall in the panhandle of Florida. I hope those folks over there in the Big Bend area will be OK. Helene was a Cat. 4 when it hit the shore, it's a big one.

The area east of the hurricane is getting hammered as well. There's massive rain and wind over Florida, and it will move up into Georgia and the Appalachians. To the west of the hurricane, where Gulf Shores is, will be pretty calm and quiet. Like I said, we really got lucky on this one, a little wobble to the west and our vacation will have been much different, as in nonexistent.

It was a nail biter all week tracking the hurricane and it's a relief that we get to go, but at the same time we feel guilty in our pleasure knowing what those folks are going through just a short distance away. A hurricane, Beryl, went right over the top of us in Southeast Texas a few months ago. It made landfall south of Houston as a Cat. 1 hurricane and by the time it went over us it was just a tropical storm, but that was bad enough. There was flooding, trees down everywhere and we were without electricity for 6 days. That, I'm sure, is nothing compared to what folks are going through beneath Helene.

Hopefully everyone got to high ground.