Alabama
Oh boy what a lot of driving the beginning of this week was. We sadly said our goodbyes to the Lubojasky family and hit the road east. Life was going to be slightly different with a girl on board but we were ok with that. The four of us left Houston, Texas Sunday night and I drove till I couldn't drive anymore. We spent the night in a very creepy casino truck stop. The night was terribly humid, hot, and noisy. The mosquitoes decided they would come out for a feeding frenzy on our bodies. I woke up every 30 minutes, killed a number of skeets, and would go back to bed. Finally at 6:30am, I couldn't take it anymore and retreated to the even creepier truckers lounge that was nothing but mirrors on the walls and ceiling. Derek and I were greeted by a strange casino guard on his morning patrol for bodies. We soon walked back to the bus and after we killed the remaining mosquitoes, (all being filled with blood) we hit the road. That was one of the single worse nights of sleep for me on the bus and seeing how it didn't scare Courtney away, we knew she'd fit nicely.
We spent all of Monday driving. A lot of slow hot driving. We had about 800 miles to cover in three days so booked it. By the end of Monday, we had made it through Louisiana, Mississippi, and just over the boarder into Alabama. After all of that, Courtney was still holding strong with no complaining. That's about as bad as it get for us and we hate long driving. You miss too much and traveling at 55mph gets old very quickly. Tuesday we decided was not to be spent driving all day. We found ourselves a recommended "hole in the wall" southern BBQ joint for lunch. There was no menu. There was ribs or ribs. This is exactly what we wanted to find. Of course, lunch was as delicious as expected. We all had a hankering for some swimming after lunch so drove around looking. By chance we ran into the Alabama lakes manager who guided us to a wonderful swimming hole. We spent the day basking in the sun and enjoying every minute of it.
By Wednesday afternoon we pulled into Pisgah, Alabama. It's a tiny town in the northeast corner of Alabama where everybody knows everybody. People sit on their porches and wave as you drive by. Life is just simply simpler out here, and I love it.
Our time here is to be spent working with CRWRC doing disaster relief. Camp To Know Him is generously lending their camp to seventy volunteers coming from Chicago. This will be home base for everyone to help with projects around the county. We will hopefully split our time between that and camp To Know Him with general things and CRWRC. No sooner than we arrived on Wednesday, we were put to work. Bev and Gary are our neighbors and soon became mom and dad. I don't think they realized when we drove in they'd be adopting four children. They happily drove us around to the job sites Wednesday and Thursday. Those two days were spent taping and mudding drywall at a couple's new house. They lost everything in the tornados. It's so incredible to here the stories from the people who went through it. It was the same along the gulf and the hurricanes. It gives me chills when I hear their stories. I was very thankful that it was only a small house. I lost interest in mudding and sanding after a while.
As for the weekend, it's been an active one. Saturday, we helped out JT (camp manager) blowing up a 14ft "iceberg". It's an inflatable thingy that you can climb and jump off of in the pond. It took a big leaf blower to inflate it and after going deaf for a couple hours, success. It's physically exhausting and I feel old every time I play on it. Sunday, we got the experience of going to"cowboy church". It was a church that well, cowboys go to. Very laid back
Alright, I've been working on this blog for a week now and have yet to finish it. I'm just going to post it and start a new one.