MOULTRIE, Ga. — Leaving her home in Kingsland, Ga., Cynthia Baker struck out on an adventure on Thursday, following evacuation signs and occasional radio reports before ending up in Moultrie.

Starting in St. Mary’s, she took her youngest son into Florida, where he planned to ride out the storm with fellow computer game enthusiasts.

Ordinarily she would have headed to her daughter’s house in Charleston, S.C., but that area also was in danger from the powerful and massive Hurricane Matthew.

“My daughter texted me: ‘Are you heading west?’ I said, what, am I a pioneer?” Baker said.

Matthew, the 11th named tropical system and fifth hurricane of the year was setting up on Thursday evening to possibly batter its way from Florida and up the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.

Baker, who is not a Georgia native, is not familiar with the interior of the state.

“I didn’t really know anything but to follow these little (hurricane evacuation) signs,” she said.

She occasionally heard some radio bulletins between music and talk radio programs and sometimes lost the signal from one before she heard any new information.

“They need more education,” she said of the weather alert system. “They were saying, if you live in these counties, take this route; if you live in these other counties, take that route.

“At the end of that they were mentioning some shelters. Where do you go? What do you do when you get there?”

When she finally arrived in the afternoon in Moultrie she found out: Eat some Chick-fil-A at Moultrie First Baptist Church.

Along the way she also heard the names of Tifton and Valdosta as well as Moultrie.

She was pleasantly surprised by the meal. Her son recently started working at Chick-fil-A, and as an employee who gets a free meal each shift he had told her about the food, but she had not tasted it herself until Thursday.

The church in Moultrie is one of two shelters opened in Colquitt County. The other is at the Georgia Baptist Convention Center in Norman Park. Between the two they have the capacity for more than 400 evacuees.