2^nd Week on Super Trip

 

We left Atlanta for northern North Carolina to visit my cousin Dave and his wife Cheryl outside Winston Salem in Germanton.  We were able to park in their long driveway – backing half way into turn around so they could still get their car out.  We were welcomed by the 17 Year Cicedas in full force.  This area was apparently about as far south in the North East of the US because when we went 30 miles south a few days later, there were none.  It was so loud in their woods that you had to raise your voice to speak.  The sound just surrounded us and went on and on throughout the day till dark – they are dead quiet at after dark but around 3:30 am, they start up again.  And they say there are millions of them per acre and it looked like it – you could see the woods floor moving with them having shed their shells and returning to the trees to lay their eggs.  A huge 2” bug with large red buggy eyes and clear wings almost the size of a dragon fly – they were anywhere they could get hold long enough to shed that outer shell they had been in for 17 yrs and get back to the trees to reproduce.  We could even hear it in the house with the AC on.  If you were in a tin building with pouring down rain on the roof – that might be close to the sound.

 

 

 

 

We had a great visit with them – a couple day visit catching up on our lives and exchanging pictures of vacations and of course AZ.  An evening of Phase 10, a trip out to their boat on Blues Lake the next day and a wonderful cookout the second night with another evening of Rummikube ending with plans for them to come out in October to see us in Arizona.  We sure do enjoy our time with them – we seem to have a lot in common and the conversations abound. 

 

We left Sunday morning for the northern mountains of North Carolina for our week at the Habitat for Humanity build.  It was a harrowing drive at the end – that road was never meant for a 33’ motorhome but we knew our friends Judy and Gordon has come in a 40’ motorhome three yrs earlier when we all did this build together…so we pressed on.  John did say “we are not going back down this way” and we didn’t.

 

We pulled in to the Avery County Habitat Center with a few rigs already parked.  One was our friends Glenn and Carol – we had also worked with them on this build 3 yrs ago.  The blue and white 2 story house was the project that year.  They waved us over to their trailer with their already built “patio” and suggested we pull up along side – close enough to put our awning up to nearly touch theirs and also build our own little patio like theirs.  We collected from the same selvedge pile they had – old metal shelving for the ground layer, old sheets of plywood and our rug on top – awnings nearly touching and we had one huge “party central patio” for afternoon refreshments after a days work.  We set up a small service table we keep in the basement of our motorhome and each day we all brought out snacks and everyone their favorite beverage and we spent the time getting to know each other better with wonderful stories of previous builds and life experiences.  We come from all walks of life but this particular build is part of what Habitat calls Care-A-Vaners – folks coming together in some kind of RV so we all had that in common.  These Care-A-Vaners builds are scheduled at the beginning of the year all over the country.  It gives folks with RVs an opportunity to schedule a build around a trip or the trip around the build.  We scheduled the build around our trip and were able to return to Avery County, NC during our time here to visit family and friends. 

 

We had a great week working on 2 houses.  We meet every morning for Devotions ( a little time to connect with God together ) and I had the opportunity to share on a couple of mornings some things God had given me during the week before coming.  Also a meeting to discuss what we hoped  to accomplish that day to pray together to start our day and as always to join hands and recite the Habitat motto…”Habitat is not a hand out, but a hand up” and we raise our hands together.  Maybe it seems a bit silly, a group of adults “going thru the motions” but we are all smiling when our hands go up holding hand together.  It does remind us of why we are all here.

 

 

 

 

  Everyone on this build was quite experienced and easily found areas they like working in when we got over to the houses, only a short distance up the road from the center.  Richard is a retired NASA Engineer now living with his wife and kids in Alabama, Andy and Dot are retired Mennenite Missionaries now living in the Lancaster area, Mike and Carol live near Ashville, NC area so they didn’t have too far to come and were returning in the fall for another build here, Glenn and Carol came from Lansing, Michigan and have been here about 4 times if I remember correctly and we knew them from 3 years ago.  We caught up with them this last spring in AZ when they came to hike The Wave.  It has to be one of the most amazing hike opportunities available to anyone – by permit only after being drawn from a lottery each year. 

 

 

 

  All of these builds are on a large parcel of land and this office builds about 3 a year now.  The new construction supervisor, Michael, was on site most of the time with us as the Director, Terry, is busy with more administrative things now.  It was fun for us to tell Michael that we built his foundation 3 yrs ago.  The other couple that we worked with on it could not be here but we all 4 sure enjoyed learning about foundation building, setting rebar etc…on his house.  It is so enriching when you can get to know the folks you are building for.  We also got to see Chasity that we built the blue 2 story house for.  She took us thru her home one afternoon.  She is a single mom with 2 kids and a very talented seamstress.  These families are all so grateful for their homes.  They do not realize what a blessing it is for us to be able to do this.

 

 

We went out to dinner together on Friday night at the end of the week.  Someone has suggested a great pizza place on a farm not too far away – they make the pizza right there when you order it and cook it in a wood fueled fireplace.  The 9 of us pretty much took over the inside seating and it was one of the best pizzas any of us had ever had – thin crispy crust and fresh ingredients.  They also did baking classes and sold great bakery goods.  This is a summer mountain vacation area and they seemed to do a wonderful  business.

We left Sat morning while the others stayed on for another week as this was a 2 wk build and everyone got up early to wave us off and say goodbye.  We had made new friends

 

Now for a side note – without looking back I may have left out that in Baton Rouge, LA we had broken our dollar store ice cube trays already.  We had made a stop at Walmart somewhere along the way to get Rubbermaid thinking them more reliable but they were too long.  So when we came upon a huge Campers World right along side the highway, John suggested we take a break and go in to get some new ones that would be the right length. Little did we know where that little jaunt would lead.

 

We were beginning to realize that the rig, tho we loved everything about the inside of it, was a bit difficult to drive.  Oh it would get us where we wanted to go – maybe at 35 miles an hour up some of the steeper mountain roads.  It just seemed a bit difficult to drive – semi’s shoving us still a bit and a floating sensation on some road services The engine was SO loud coming from the floor compartment in between us that we could hardly talk over it and certainly not hear the radio. It was emitting a lot of heat too – very very hot to the touch.  The house AC units were loud when they kicked on – so much so that we ran the living space one at night so we could sleep and the bedroom one during evening TV time so we could hear the tv.  We agreed that these were not horrible things but we had 3 more months on the road and it was enough for us to look over at this huge lot of RVs for sale at this Campers World and consider driving a newer one…just to see what it was like.  Oh we just never know where some considerations will take us :>)

 

So we decided to take a look and we test drove a Diesel …just to see if the power of a Diesel might be better.  We were very interested but we decided after much discussion between us that for right now, we were ok in the one we had and drove on.  But the seed was planted. 

 

Now back to coming back to our drive down the mountain from the Habitat build….there was another very large Campers World RV center and another huge selection of RVs to look at.   And we did.

 

We stopped at another RV Sales in Statesville, NC, looked a little more and heading on to our destination for the next week…High Rock Lake and the campground up the lake a bit from where we lived.  They gave us a nice full size pull thru lot for the week.  Our friends Cheri and Terry had dinner nearly ready for us at their place on the lake not far away  – Venison and all the fixins…refreshments out on their deck and Dominoes till the wee hours. We had planned to spend the night at their place so we could stay up late and be there early for breakfast.

 

 

The rest of the week we were at friends there in North Carolina every day.  We played Pickelball with friends Jocelyn and Phil.  Another from that group took us all out on the lake in his refurbished old pontoon boat.  Now Don has a beautiful deck boat very similar to our old boat but this was just for fun and we all had a great time.

 

 

 

This is where we bought the new motorhome - a 33' Newmar - same size and we loved it.  Just a lot of new technology that makes it easier to live in and drive.

 

 

On to Raleigh for a visit with John's son Johnny and his family - a nice time for

the four generations...John, Johnny, Grandson Brad and Great Grandson Landon. Paige is our granddaughter and Rosalie our daughter in law.  I slipped up getting good pics of Paige and Rosalie so I went and found other pics we had of them - sorry you guys.  Our granddaughter Carrie, Brad's twin had recently moved to Tennessee - hopefully I can include a pic of her later.

 

 

 

 

 

End of a great week in North Carolina and we will head north from here.