Our Fourth and Final Week in Cordova

As we reflect on our month here in Cordova, AL much has been accomplished since we came. The crew hopes to complete this home in the remaining three weeks and have a home dedication before they leave for Christmas.

 The week begins with painting. Kathy is amazed at the colors people choose.

 End of the day clean-up by the painting crew.

 The laminate flooring was installed in three bedrooms, dining and living room in less than two days. It is hard to explain the mayhem of traffic in the hall when you have twelve workers in one house all needing to move from room to room doing a variety of jobs.

 Almost all the doors, window trim and baseboard are in place in only a few days.

 The home owner Ms Marsha came by and was very pleased with the paint colors and the quality of the workmanship. If you are wondering about the ragged top edge - it will be covered with crown moulding.

 Norm, our director examines the kitchen cabinets that arrived Thursday afternoon.

Our November group of three American and three Canadian couples. Jon holds a pair of boots to represent his wife who was sick and could not attend our Thursday evening supper.

Thanks for following our blog. We will post again in mid January when we will be back after our Christmas break.

Celebrating Thanksgiving

The ceramic tile team: Keith cutting and Bernie installing.

This week at the construction site work continued at a busy pace. Priority was getting the taping, mudding and sanding completed as quick as possible. The mudding was still going on while some of the ladies were already sanding the screw dimples. To keep everyone busy our director Norm, was having people work ahead at jobs like painting trim boards and doors while two of the guys worked on bathroom floors installing the cement board and ceramic tile. We would normally work on Thanksgiving Day Thursday, but this year we received an invitation for dinner at the home of our clients parents. Our director got the go ahead from our group to work on black Friday instead and those who wanted to go shopping would fit that in too.

Agnes and Annette will never look at ceilings the same again after spending many hours of detail sanding.

Friday was the start of painting with three bedrooms being primed.

Because the home owners, Steve and Marsha live an hour away and Steve is a truck driver, we had not met them until this week. It was a good experience to visit with them and their extended family hearing the stories of what happened the day of the tornadoes. Their old home had got badly damaged by the first tornado of the day and then with the second hitting the same location later in the day it scattered the few things that were left from before. A bond between us all formed quickly as we shared what we were thankful for.

The whole family contributed to a great southern Thanksgiving meal which we all enjoyed.

As we take a late afternoon walk around the upper campground we enjoy the scene of the private church building across the lake from our RV's.

Do'n and Eat'n

Welcome to our blog of weekly activities. This hill to the mountain view campsites has given us a walking challenge. Our goal is to make the walk down to the campground entrance and back up a daily heart healthy exercise. At the end of a work day this can be a difficult task. To get an idea of just how steep this climb is Jim decided to measure the angle. He figured it was up to 22 1/2 degrees, one foot up for each four feet forward - the same as our house roof. The GPS says it's a 130 foot elevation change - certainly not a flat land walk.

Knowing the tool trailer had the tools he needed, Jim made a pizza paddle on a sunny Saturday (No, it's not an over sized ping pong paddle) for our preferred way of baking homemade pizza on the barbeque. The paddle is used to carry the dough to the barbeque.

After having had a limited amount of work to do last week, everyone was ready to get going on the drywall work Monday. We were glad for a dry place to work on a rainy day. Bernie and Jim worked on the ceilings while Agnes and Annette completed driving the remaining screws. Dick and Jon worked on the wall sheeting and Jenny drove the extra screws.

The house was a buzz with workers in various rooms, cutting, carrying, and screwing sheets in place. It wasn't possible to get a picture without the dust spots.

 

Sometimes tool repairs are needed before the job can go on.

 



 

By Tuesday Jim started on the taping and by the end of our four day work week only one bathroom was needed to be taped.

With hard construction work there seems to be no lack of appetite in this group. Thursday evening we enjoyed our weekly pot-luck supper, then on Saturday our group together with visiting friends from the Columbus, MS warehouse enjoyed more food at The Ole Cookstove buffet restaurant (run by the Yoder family) an hour drive north of here in a quiet, secluded country setting.

This restaurant has limited hours with only being open Friday and Saturday, but are known far and wide for their good homestyle food. We waited for 45 minutes before being seated.  On our return we stopped and shopped at the Dutch Oven Bakery. This is an Mennonite/Amish style store with a variety of baking, meats, cheese, jams and more things not normally found in a regular store.

Alabama is a scenic state and a joy to explore. A stop at this covered bridge gave us a chance to settle the home made ice cream and desserts that we had just indulged on.

Back to Work & a Walk Through History

It was like coming home as we pulled into the familiar campground at Sleepy Holler, except this time we were to go to the mountain view sites on the top level of the campground and we did not know for sure if the truck could do the steep climb with the heavy RV trailer behind it. But no problem at all.

We are six couples at this site. We have worked with each of the couples except one. We are nicely divided as half Canadian and half American.

A nice change this time is that we are working on a new build. It is located in a flood plan so it is raised up about eight feet. The group last month had worked on the porch and wheelchair ramps.

This view from the deck of the new house overlooks the neighbourhood and still shows tornado damaged trees. In other directions you can see the Warrior River, with a train track just beyond that and fall colored trees on the hillside.

Jim and I worked along with Jenny and Jon doing the blocking and insulation from the underside of the house.
We only worked two and half days and then could not continue in the house because the plumbing had not been completed and inspected yet.

 





Everyone enjoyed pizza for lunch on Tuesday.

 

Part of our mountain view campsite.

Thursday our group got the day off and so we as a group toured the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute which opened in 1992. Here we saw exhibits revealing dramatic differences between black and white life in Alabama from the late 1800's to the present. The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and Kelly Ingram park are across the street from the museum and are where the 1960s demonstrations took place. Policemen ordering snarling dogs to attack a crowd of demonstrators, firemen wielding firehoses at school children, and four young girls dying tragically in a church bombing - these are images people remember when they think of Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1950s and '60s. But there are also stories of triumph and heroism; Birmingham citizens, both Black and White, risked their lives to confront segregation and say, "enough is enough".

We enjoy taking in local activities. A Saturday concert of Blue Grass / Southern Gospel music by quartets from the area made for a great evening.

12 Days of Meandering

Welcome back readers after our long summer absence.
We spent twelve days travelling to our next MDS site. The first two days we dealt with rainy and misty conditions. In Sloan, Iowa we encountered a very windy night which shook our trailer and rattled our vents. The morning brought snow flurries so we decided to keep moving south in hope of better weather.
We headed to Watkins Mill State Park, northeast of Kansas City, Missouri where we spent three nights and met friends for supper.

Electric power is great for crisp fall camping. The campgrounds water at the sites was turned off for the season so Jim supplied the running water. Carrying water by the jug meant very brief showers.

 



 On one of our walks exlporing this park we came across this interesting fruit. We learned from a campground host that this is an inedible fruit called hedgeapple. The wood of the tree is very hard and rot resistant making it ideal for fence posts.

In order to see some fall leaf colors we decided to head toward the Natchez Trace Parkway which starts at Nashville, Tennessee and goes to Natchez, Mississippi. We drove about 400 km.on this beautiful, scenic and slower paced parkway.

 



 Had a nights stop in historic Davey Crockett country.

Pavement and bridges make travel easy compared to the past trail conditions and the Tennessee River ferry crossing.

What a beautiful view to wake up to!

 

Antique cars - Model T Ford Club from Houston, TX and area - most of them had trailered their old cars to Natchez and then drove the Trace Parkway north eastward to Nashville and then back. We encountered them several times as they would stop at points of interest. We also met four couples with antique cars from southern Mississippi at a campground who were also enjoying the drive on this parkway.

 

Annette standing in the old sunken trace helps you to see the deep ruts formed 200 years ago.

Having numerous friends that were volunteering at the MDS Warehouse in Columbus, MS, we decided it would be a good time to check this place out. We spent two nights and a day with them.
They knew we were coming and made a nice supper for us on Thursday evening which was enjoyed by all. We got a tour of this amazing place which has a fleet of trucks, vans, numerous RV's, specialty built trailers as bunkhouses, shower facilities and kitchen/dining facilities. These are cleaned and maintained and ready for emergency responses.

We had frequently heard of MDS's warehouse in Columbus, MS, while at various work sites. It was good to get a new understanding of what takes place here.