WORK PROJECT, Gulfport, Mississippi

We spent a week in Gulfport, Mississippi on a United Methodist Volunteers in Mission work project. John and I were part of a team of 27 people -- 14 youth and 4 adults from a UMC in southern Calif; plus 6 adults and 1 youth from a UMC in Indiana. We were each given bright green T-shirts, identifying the relief organization we were a part of.

It was fun to be part of a group, but we were glad to have our own private living quarters. We had parked our trailer behind the Gateway UMC -- a church that had converted part of their upstairs into living quarters for volunteers. We were told that at the beginning of the disaster relief efforts, they had 200 volunteers staying there, sleeping in every possible inch of the building. Can't imagine how they did it. Just with our group of 27, it was a challenge for the group to share 4 showers, 4 toilets, and several bunk bed dorm-type rooms. They had a large kitchen, but not large enough for 200 people! We did our own cooking, and I helped with several of the meals, but was really only in charge of one breakfast. The site coordinator, who did an excellent job with all the duties he had getting us out to the jobs, would also purchase food items in bulk, and we tried to figure out how to fix meals from the supplies on hand! A doctor and his wife from Indiana did most of the meal planning/preparation, for which I was grateful.

Since John had the most construction skills, he was needed on various projects. I became his assistant and/or navigator. I even learned to operate a circular saw -- you'd think a contractor's wife should know things like that! The biggest job was being part of a roofing team on a house that looked like it should have been bulldozed instead of repaired. Nothing was to code -- and since there aren't any inspections in this part of the country, it's amazing buildings survive at all. With lots of ingenuity, John and a couple men from Indiana got the roofing figured out, and the shingles on. I was happy to be the go-fer on the ground!

John did several other odd jobs, and we made several trips with the VIM trailer to the dump. The first day we loaded the trailer with junk -- truly junk -- from a woman's home who said the debris had been left from the work on her house 2 years ago! Let me tell you... there was more than construction debris in that pile! At the other houses where we picked up stuff for the dump, we had youth that helped, luckily. We only worked on one project where the man and his son were there while we were working. Most of the projects didn't have residents that our workers interacted with -- a difference from our experience in Biloxi in October 2007.

On our last night together, the whole group went out to dinner at "The Shed," a restaurant/experience that is a "must" if you're in the area. It has the best bbq food around -- and has even been featured on the Food Network more than once. It was delicious!

We bid farewell to our new friends on Saturday morning, and have now driven to the Corpus Christi area in Texas.

Leaving Florida – Some overall impressions

We have spent three months in Florida. We’ve been here as “snow birds,” and we can understand why Florida is such a popular place for people like us. With freezing temperatures and snowstorms in the north, we are so glad we made the decision to spend the winter in this moderate weather area. We will spend next week at a work project (with United Methodists Volunteers in Mission) in Gulfport, Mississippi, so before we leave, some impressions....

It hasn’t been warm and sunny every day, certainly, but the cold or rainy days have been few and far between. Most days have been pleasant, many with days where we enjoyed going into a pool or taking a dip in the ocean. But the weather can drastically change pretty fast. There have been a couple times when we had the air conditioner on one day, and the heater the next. We watch the weather reports regularly, because there could be tornado warnings (luckily, none that affected us), or severe rain/thunderstorms, or high winds. One our longest driving days recently, the winds were awful – it was hard on John pulling the trailer.

We have especially loved the ocean and beaches of Florida. The water on the Gulf Coast is an emerald green color; Key West area has gorgeous shades of blue. There are miles of white quartz sand beaches that look like sugar, (and in one place, felt like flour.) It’s so wonderful to dig our feet into the sand, or take barefoot long walks on the beach. And the shells – particularly in the Naples area! Piles and piles. You could collect buckets and there would still be tons of shells left on the shore. There are more marinas here than any place we’ve ever been, with lots of commercial or private fishing boats and yachts. (If we lived here, we’d want to get a boat, too, because there are so many waterways.) We’ve loved the abundance of fresh seafood, even if we’ve had to purchase it rather than catch it!

The diversity of wildlife is amazing. We’ve seen more alligators than I could have imagined – none close enough to cause any worry, thank goodness. Also saw a couple crocodiles. Southern Florida is one of the few places crocodiles and alligators co-exist. The birds have been most interesting, especially the large water birds: many great blue herons, egrets, osprey, pelicans, anhingas. We've seen a couple of eagles in their nests. We’re not so good at identifying the smaller birds, but we’ve loved listening to them. There are huge bumble bees where we are now, but fortunately they’re not interested in our bodies! Huge dragonflies in another area. Lots of small butterflies. Some mosquitoes, but not many, really –whereas they are very prevalent later in the year. The no-see-ums have not been fun in the southern area – those tiny little things have been attracted to Gayle, causing mosquito-like itchy bites, yet they seem not to be attracted to John! There are biting ants, too, Gayle found out after standing in an ant pile unknowingly until she felt stings on her toes. Those 6-7 welts lasted for weeks!

The plant life is also interesting. Lots of areas have a combination of pines and palms – tall slash pine trees with small saw palmetto palms along with other shrubbery. In other areas, there are many different kinds of tall palm trees. Much of Florida is marshy, covered with sea grass or mangrove trees growing in the fresh or salt water. The manatee is the state fish, but because they don’t see well or move fast, they get mangled in the boat propellers easily, so there are many protected areas for manatees.

There are agricultural areas, obviously, but we haven’t seen as many orange or grapefruit orchards as I expected – probably because we didn’t go inland very often. But the fresh orange juice or bags of grapefruit we’ve purchased have been wonderful. We also know that there are many sugar cane farms, but we didn’t see too many of them either. Lots of ripe strawberries are in fruit stands this time of year, but we haven’t seen any strawberry fields.

As in any state, there is a wide gap between the rich and poor. The wealth is obvious with the large homes and screened-in swimming pools, lush golf courses, large yachts, expensive resorts and restaurants galore. But there are many run-down areas as well. Florida still seems to be building many new areas, and/or repairing from the damage of Hurricane Ivan a couple years ago, but some areas are still in very blighted conditions.

Then there’s the current debate about the electoral process – whether or not to count the votes of the Florida election that was held early. We’re glad we didn’t vote in Florida. We’re glad we don’t live permanently in Florida. But we are awfully glad we’ve had these three months to experience life here as snow birds, to walk the beaches, to enjoy the wildlife, to see diversity in so much of nature. It has been a blessing.

Gulf Seashore—Florida Panhandle

We are spending 10 days along the Gulf of Mexico Florida Panhandle. We have stayed in 3 different State Parks, and are very impressed with the camping and picnic facilities in these parks. All are handicap accessible. All have well-marked trails through the wilderness areas, many with raised boardwalks to walk across the marshy areas. All have gorgeous white sandy beaches nearby, some within walking or biking distance. In two of them, we were located right on the lagoons where we could watch boats go in and out from our picnic table or chairs, or water birds stalk their prey right in front of us. Beautiful sunsets.

At this last one, we’re close to the National Gulf Seashore, with seven miles of nothing but quartz sand beaches and sand dunes. It’s been somewhat overcast or windy part of the time, but on one of the gorgeous sunny days last weekend, many families were enjoying the beach, as were many fishermen with their poles lodged in the sand while they lounged nearby. We didn’t actually see anyone catching anything, but they say that there is good fishing in both the lagoons and ocean. We have certainly enjoyed wonderful fresh seafood – but we’ve had to purchase it at a seafood market! Lots of shrimp, grouper, mahi mahi, tilapia, for example. In another part of Florida, there were lots of stone crab claws, which were not quite as good as crabs we get in California, but these crabs have a different life cycle. When the claws are harvested, the crabs are not killed. They just grow more claws.

(John enjoyed getting his kite up in the air on the beach -- too bad I can't get the kite and John in the same picture!

Lots of sand dunes in this part of Florida. In one area, there were sand dunes and lakes in the same area – one of only two places in the world where they are found together. (South Africa is the other place.) We’ve loved walking on the trails and listening to the birds. I often wonder what it would be like to live in a world where there are no birds. I’m currently typing at our picnic table – a bird about 8 feet away has been entertaining me with its warble song for quite awhile. We’re not that good at identifying birds yet, but we’re certainly getting more interested in spotting them and listening to their sounds. We also have spotted a couple eagles in their branch nests. I also love listening to the wind in the pine trees. The wooded areas have tall slash pine trees, medium sized oaks, and small saw palmetto palms along with various shrubs. Some of the ponds look like a floating green garden. The duckweed that floats on top is the smallest flowering plant in the world. Other areas have lily pads. All have a brackish look to the water.

All along these wonderful beach areas, there are also communities that have built up -- even a few newly planned communities, as well, where everything is in walking or biking distance. There are also many resort areas with huge high rise hotels and condos. (We’re so glad the state or federal governments have protected some of the natural wildlife areas so that it's not all built up.) We went into one high rise that had an open house, just for the fun of it. The 2 and 3-bedroom condos we looked at all had full ocean views and balconies, private elevators, 3 swimming pools, 2 tennis courts, 2 exercise rooms, theater/video viewing rooms, entertainment areas. If we wanted to move to Florida, we could sell our house in Santa Rosa and live pretty well here. But then there’s the hot and sticky summer months, and we would be much too far from family, whether California or Michigan! So it’s not for us.

We’re currently at the Big Lagoon State Park, which is near Pensacola. We didn’t have “Rosie” (our GPS voice) turned on getting here, partly because we didn’t have an actual address of the State Park, and partly because it looked easy enough to find on the map. Wrong! We missed one of the turns and ended up in a line of cars waiting to get through security at going a Naval Military Base. The security guard gave us a funny look seeing our pick up and trailer, since we obviously were not in the right area. He told us how to turn around, but it was a bit tricky for John maneuvering through their maze of lanes to get us back on the right road. We went back later, without trailer, to watch a public Blue Angels practice session. This is the home base of the Blue Angels, we’ve learned. Then went to the Naval Air Museum.

Also along the way getting here, John hit a curb with one of the back support jacks on the trailer. We went to a Camping World store about 45 minutes from here to get a new jack, and John has spent a good part of the morning trying to install a new jack. I’m glad he’s so good at that kind of stuff – and keeping us safe on this long road trip, since he’s doing all the driving with trailer! While we were at Camping World, we looked at new trailers, motor homes, small camping vehicles. We are more pleased than ever with what we have in our 23’ travel trailer. It has everything we need!

Lake Okeechobee; Orlando

We left the yachts and marinas of Key Largo, and spent several days at Lake Okeechobee. It is in the middle of Florida, and in a very poor, rural area. The damage from the hurricanes is still very evident. Funny how we hear about rebuilding needs in the south, but don't hear much about the Florida needs.

Lake Okeechobee is the 2nd largest fresh water lake in the continental US. But it's not a swimming lake. We saw 8 huge alligators casually floating along the placid lake not too far from us after a rain. We loved where our trailer was parked -- right by the lake -- where we could hear the water lapping at the edges. Beautiful sunsets. The gnats and no-see-ums bothered us so we didn't sit outside as much as we would have liked.

Now we're back in Orlando -- where we were 3 months ago! We had planned to see John's grandson again, but he had left the area before we got there. We celebrated John's birthday at a Japanese steak house, where they cook the meal on a big grill in front of us. Great dinner!

We enjoyed our day yesterday at Epcot Disney World, although we left before the fireworks at the end of the day because it started raining. Very informative, and something for all ages. Lots of interactive future-oriented things, and a nice area of international sections. We particularly enjoyed some of the photography that were part of the attractions -- one of them simulating a hang glider over California. Almost made us homesick.

We're actually starting our westward-ho trek tomorrow, but it will take another 4+ months to get back home. Still too much to do and see! And we're still having way too much fun!

Key Largo; Key West

We were pleasantly surprised when we arrived at the RV Park in Key Largo. We were assigned a “camp” spot right on the water, with a tiki hut, coconut tree, deck, and boat dock all set up. Too bad we don’t have a boat we could go out into the ocean right from here! So after getting set up and exploring the area, we sat on our deck and watched the sun go down over the water with our wine and cheese. Although it was a bit cooler than normal, it still had that tropical feel.

The next day we drove to Key West – about 100 miles from Key Largo. It was amazing to see the various islands all connected by bridges. The Gulf of Mexico or Atlantic Ocean were on either side of us all the way, even if we couldn’t always see them because of the buildings in the way part of the time. The water was a beautiful blue-green. We saw more marinas, boats for sale, and people fishing than I’ve ever seen.

We were ready for lunch by the time we got to Key West, and had been told there were 300 restaurants on that small part of the island. We found a place on the marina that was just great. I remembered hearing when we were in Maine that lobsters were also raised in Florida, although they weren’t supposed to be as good as in Maine. So, of course, when I saw lobster tail on our lunch menu in Key West, I had to decide for myself! Since I haven’t had enough lobster to be a critic, I thought it was as good as any I’ve had! I guess I would order lobster (at a reasonable price) just about anywhere to do the taste test!

We enjoyed walking around Key West – the most south eastern part of our trip. We went into the Audobon House and Gardens, built in the late 1800’s. Although Mr. Audobon didn’t actually live in that house, he did many of his bird drawings or floral pictures from that area. We also learned that life wasn’t easy in that area in earlier days. Hard to get fresh water. Hurricanes were destructive, including wiping out the railroad that was the first connection for the islands more than once. We learned that the local people can tell when hurricanes are coming because of the birds start leaving.

Another day we went to a State Park nearby, and went on a snorkeling boat tour over the coral reefs. It was lovely with the beautiful fish, the blue-green water. Saw several baricuda along with the many smaller, colorful fish. John is a much better swimmer than I am, but somehow I am always ready for a snorkeling outing when available!

We are continually in awe of God’s amazing diversity of creation, whether under water, on ground, or in the air, or outer limits of space. What a blessing to be able to enjoy this spectacular world.