Check out the ground pic's and what are your thoughts on the focus.
Okay - explain to me your exact settings for this last sequence. I notice you still have the shooting mode in "M" rather than "P". And it looks like you set the camera into Manual Focus mode with the focus locked at infinity? If so, then why are the pics of the pavement so perfectly in focus when the camera is inches away. This is not making sense.
We could try something else basic here. Using just the Canon menus (no CHDK yet), put the camera in Tv priority mode (pg 140 in the manual), set the shutter speed as high as it will go, select Canon Manual Focus mode and lock that at infinity (pg 125-126), and then just run the simple
interval.lua script that comes with CHDK ( in the A/CHDK/SCRIPTS folder).
Make sure you have set
Enhanced Photo Operations ->
Disable Overrides [ Yes ]