Wandering America
January 2010 Part II
| Habitat For Humanity Care-A-Vanners On Sunday, January 10th, we broke camp at St. John's RV Park in St. Augustine and made our wayto the Flagler County Fairgrounds in Bunnell, Florida to begin our two week Habitat for Humanity Care-A-Vanners build. It was still "wicked" cold in Florida with the evening temperatures dropping into the teens at night. Fortunately we had two houses that needed to be finished off inside thereby keeping us out of the cold for the first week. By the end of that week the weather returned to more seasonal temperatures for January in Florida. Upon our arrival at the Fairgrounds we were greeted by Gord and Helen Grant from Ontario. They were part of the Care-A-Vanner group and had arrived on Friday; this was to be their eleventh build. We got set up and by three o'clock all but one couple had arrived. There were ten rigs and 19 Care-A-Vanners on this build with Judy and I being the leaders. The Flagler County Fairgrounds had just completed construction on a new camping area with water and electric hook-ups.   That evening we met at the affiliate offices for a welcome dinner and orientation meeting.    Ruth's House -The first week we installed floors in two Habitat houses. Ruth is a single mother with two teenage daughters who lost her husband to cancer. She was "on the job" with us for the two and a half days that we worked on her home.        James and Valerie's House - James and Valerie are a young couple with two daughters, ages 4 and 18 months, and they, too, were "on the job" for a couple of days while we were working on their home.       In four and a half days we installed all the flooring, installed all the baseboard, and did caulking and painting in two three bedroom homes - one about 1200 square feet and the other one around 1400 square feet. Ruth's house had a combination of wood flooring and ceramic tile whereas James and Valerie's house was 100% ceramic tile. An Outing - On the first Friday night the whole group went to Martin's Seafood Restaurant over on Flagler Beach for dinner. Judy and I had the Shrimp Scampi which was very good. There was a Maine Lobster dinner for $13.95 which several of the couples had and a prime rib roast, also for $13.95, which looked excellent (needed a dawggie bag for that one). It was Gord's birthday so his wife had "snuck" in a cake that was all decorated with carpenter's tools. He had even forgotten that it was his birthday so he was surprised when the cake showed up.   The second week started off with a Habitat for Humanity Awareness day at the local High School. We set up nine work stations; one built door and window headers, another one built T's and corner posts for framing while the other seven work stations were dedicated to a wall section each that needed to be framed. They had an area for kids where they could build and paint cardboard houses. It was a great success with a much higher attendance than anticipated.     It ended at noon and we loaded up all the equipment, headers, T's, corners, and framed walls and headed for the job site where we began erecting the walls. Because of the Awareness day we were a little bit behind schedule on the first day but, recovered nicely on Tuesday. Shannon's House -This third house is going to be Shannon's, a single mom with one teenage son. She spent one day on the job site with us but, works for the correction department (jail) where they expect her to show up from time to time in order to get a pay check.   By
the week's end we had all the exterior and interior walls up, the
sheathing on and Tyvek installed, and all the windows installed.
Also, on Wednesday morning we went back to James and
Valerie's house to lay 15 pallets of sod around their home.         Saturday morning we all went to a local Perkins Restaurant for one last outing - breakfast together before several of us hit the road. There was some talk of a "reunion build" which later became a reality so next year most of the group wants to return to Bunnell for another build together and the Affiliate is more than happy to have us back. The Care-A-Vanner Team - We can't say enough about the Care-A-Vanner group that we got to work with. What a great bunch of people who worked side by side as if we'd be doing this for years. There was a great camaraderie among the group on and off the job. Each afternoon, after w*rk, we would come home, get cleaned up, get out our lawn chairs and tables, and join together for wine, snacks, and conversation.    Let us introduce you to "The C-A-V Team"; run your cursor over the pictures to see their names and where they are from.            We can't forget our support team from the Flagler County Habitat For Humanity Affiliate. Unfortately we didn't get a picture of Lindsay.    Florida's Scenic By Way There's a scenic by-way the starts near Fort Caroline in Jacksonville, Florida and makes it's way along the eastern shoreline to just south of Flagler Beach. We took an afternoon drive on the Sunday between our build weeks and drove to St. Augustine Beach. From there we began heading south on Florida's A1A which is designated as a National Scenic By-way. Along the way we stopped to visit Fort Matanzas (pronounced Ma-tansas - like Kansas). Across the highway from the Fort is Matanzas beach where you can actually drive your vehicles on the beach. It was a fun drive and we enjoyed getting out for the afternoon; unfortunately, the battery in our camera died and we hadn't brought the spare so we only got a few pictures.     Visiting with Friends in St. Augustine Gene and Judi Curp had arrived at St. John's RV Park in St. Augustine on the Thursday before we finished the Care-A-Vanner build. We had planned to go to the Daytona Beach area and then meet up with them for a trip to Kennedy Space Center but, we were unable to find a Passport America campground and didn't want to pay the high campground fees in that area. So we made reservations to return to St. John's RV Park which turned out to be a good thing because Darrell got hit with a flu bug. We arrived at the campground on Saturday afternoon (the 23rd) and had dinner with the Curps. Judi prepared a nice chicken and mushroom soup which hit the spot for Darrell. On Sunday, he slept for 18 hours out of 24 while taking cough syrup with codeine. By Monday he was making progress but still very much under the weather. Mike and Peggy Evringham arrived Monday afternoon and Judy had prepared a chili dinner with rolls followed by butter pecan ice cream with Oreo cookie sticks. The Curps showed up with surgical masks which they handed out to everyone except Darrell. It made a good photo-op.  Tuesday we did a little sightseeing with Mike and Peggy stopping at Pizza Time on St. George Street for lunch (that is "Oh so Good" pizza). We visited the Castillo de San Marcos where we were surprised to find out that the America the Beautiful Senior Pass is good for the holder plus three adults for entrance into National Parks (we had thought that it had to be family members - not so, three adults). We spent about an hour walking about the fort before returning to the car. That evening Mike and Peggy hosted the evening meal inviting Gene and Judi to join us.        Wednesday was a stay at the campground day. We visited with Mike and Peggy for coffee and then returned home to do a little house keeping and getting the RV ready to travel. Everyone gathered at Gene and Judi's for the evening meal. Judi out did us all with a wonderful meal. She had even baked some oatmeal cookies that were out of this world. What a great four days we had (other than the flu bug incident). This is what makes RVing so much fun. Home Again, Home Again Due to Darrell's illness we didn't get to go to the Kennedy Space Center nor did we get to visit Don and Debra Decker in the Titusville area, however, as you can see from the above we made due. It was now time to head west, Judy had smelled the barn and was more than ready to be home. We were going to stop over at the Corps of Engineers Lake Seminole Park on the way home but decided that we had had enough "camping without full hook-ups". We both like our loooong hoooot showers; therefore, we decided to drive to DeFuniak Springs, Florida and stay at Lake Juniper RV Park (a Passport America campground).  It was a longer drive than we like to make and Darrell was pretty much done in after driving for six hours (still hadn't regained his stamina after the flu bug). We stayed for two days in order to wait out a severe storm system that was moving east across the country; it passed over us Friday night and was quite mild in comparison to what they received in Summerdale, Alabama. On Friday we did a little sightseeing around DeFuniak Springs. There is a spring fed lake (Lake Defuniak) that is located right in the town. It is almost perfectly round and is surrounded with a park which is lined with some antebellum homes. We parked the truck and walked around the entire lake (about a mile and a half walk) which was over flowing the sidewalk in several places due to all of the rain we've had. It was a cool, overcast, and dreary day, otherwise it would have been a very pleasant walk. Next we stopped by Lowes to pick up some concrete blocks to use for leveling the rig on our site at Rainbow Plantation.    Saturday morning found us on the road again heading for Rainbow Plantation. It was just over a two hour drive from Juniper Lake RV Park to Rainbow Plantation. Norm Payne and Don Martin came over to help me dig up the ground and install the leveling block on the site before backing the rig onto the site. This will keep the tires from sinking into the ground while parked here for long periods of time. Later that evening we gather together at Don and Gloria Martin's rig for a welcome home dinner as well as an opportunity to finally meet our long time email buddies, Mike and Gerri Jones. What a great way to start off the next few months of fun, food, and fellowship at Rainbow Plantation.     Well, one month of 2010 is already behind us. For the next three months we will be staying at the Plantation while Judy participates in her many basket weaving endeavors and Darrell engages is several RV upgrade projects. We'll both be busy with all the socializing activities here at the Plantation as well. Mike and Peggy will be arriving to spend sometime with us again this year so we'll be seeking out some more local sightseeing attractions as there is several that we would still like to see. Until next time, be safe, have fun, and God bless. |