Fall 2011 Volunteering in Louisiana

Welcome back readers. Half a year of summer activities have slipped by and now we are on the road again exploring new places.


As much as we like volunteering and exploring it is hard to say goodbye to our family.


We had only been on the road for an hour when the trucks "maintenance required" light came on. So we stopped in at a garage in Letellier and received immediate help with resetting the message code. I quote from Annette's journal. "We arrived at the U.S. border where we were asked to go inside for the paper work. Here we were served by a friendly gal who knew what she was doing and had us finger printed and photographed in less than half an hour. We figured God worked it out so we wouldn't get to the border until this clerk was there to help us so efficiently." We had been warned this process could take 2 - 3 hours.



We had a new experience as we filled up with gas in Fargo, ND, when a young man approached Jim with an empty gas can and asked for a can of gas so he could go back to California. Jim commented to him that he would need quite a few of these cans filled to get him there. So he helped him out.

We chose a new route heading south this year by taking smaller highways instead of Interstates. One area of interest was the Rolling Hills Wind Project in southwestern Iowa which is one of the largest in the nation with 193 wind turbines to be completed by year end.

We made a two night stop at Watkins Mill State Park, Missouri (getting into their very last campsite). Our friends Walt and Ruby invited us to join them for their Sunday morning breakfast and church service. That afternoon the four of us went to the Watkins Woolen Mill and toured the house and mill. Here are a few pictures to interest you in checking out the website for all it's history. www.watkinsmill.org

After enjoying the Pierce Arrow show in Branson we continued our travels through the Arkansas Ozarks on a small scenic drive with many switchbacks and speeds as low as 10 mph.

Well we have arrived in Louisiana the land of sugar cane, rice, alligators, armadillos, and ANTS. We had our first invasion of sugar ants our first night in the state.

Sorry about our delayed blog post, because the US postal service did not deliver a package containing the MDS wireless card instead returning it to MDS in Pennsylvania. We will try and have our next post ready in a few days.