February 2025 – RVing With a Purpose

Uskichitto Week One

Saturday February 22, 2025

When we last posted, we had just arrived at Uskichitto Retreat Center (pronounced “Whiskey Chitto”) in LeBlanc, LA. The retreat center has five cabins to house campers for summer camp season. The cabins are also used during the off season by businesses, clubs and church groups for weekend retreats, meetings and work sessions. We have full hookup camp sites and laundry facilities. This a three week NOMADS project, but we will only be working the first two weeks. Mariel and Shannon are our leaders. It’s so good to work with them again. We haven’t seen them since the annual meeting last year. We have team members, Pam and Dennis who we worked with at Camp Sumatanga last year and Lou and Gabriela who we just met. They are relatively new members from Iowa.

There is lots of work to be done at the camp, but our highest priority is replacing the flooring at the pavilion. Monday morning it was all hands-on deck to empty out the pavilion of all the sound equipment, furniture, etc. and remove the toilets and sinks from the restrooms and store everything in a nearby building. That done, we began using various tools to remove the old flooring. Most of the tile actually came up fairly easily. It was all the glue that remained on the floor that was the problem. The camp director rented us a machine that made the job easier but there was still lots of time spent on our knees scraping. It was decided that we would be using epoxy paint with color chips to replace the old tile. After scraping all the old glue up there was dust and dirt everywhere. Then, we began the process of cleaning the concrete mopping numerous times to get it clean. With that huge job completed, Thursday afternoon we etched the concrete and then mopped the concrete until clean again. The mop water had to be clear. That’s where we left it for the weekend.

The power scraper motor quit after about an hour of work. Fortunately the tile was loose enough to scrape up manually.

Mariel “helping” Dennis with the power grinder

Our tools of the trade for most of the week

How we had fun all week

When there was a little down time throughout the week, a few of us were able to complete some smaller projects, the repair of some leaky faucets, replacement of some steps, repair of a “soft” spot in a bathroom and window cleaning in the cafeteria. We worked hard this week and we were rewarded with a fantastic Cajun meal Thursday night prepared by some of the ladies from Squryes UMC. The weekend will bring rest, laundry and perhaps some sight seeing.

It took a while to repair the leak in this shower.

Lou repairing a picnic table while all the mops were occupied.

There are many crawfish mounds around the grounds, but we didn’t try to catch any bugs …

… however, Mariel did rescue this cute chameleon from he dining room.

Congaree National Park and On To Our Next Project

February 16, 2025

We returned to the US from Antarctica on Tuesday, January 29. We made the drive back to South Carolina and pretty much just collapsed. So very thankful for our sweet Debra who fed us the next few days while we recouped, washed clothes and reorganized everything in Fred. After about 3 nights of sleep we felt like we were back among the living. We still aren’t caught up on everything but we rarely are. The great news is that Randy is feeling better and once we had rested, we were able to help him and Debra with cutting down some additional trees.

Lots of chainsaw work the few days we were in SC

We took down several more trees that were too close to the buildings.

February 6 the four of us visited Congaree National Park. It’s the only National Park in South Carolina and none of us had ever visited. It’s located close to Columbia and is basically a day use park with no RV parking or camping. Congaree has the largest intact expanse of old growth bottomland hardwood forest remaining in the southeastern US. There are some really huge trees in the park. There are several nice hiking trails. We chose the boardwalk trail and enjoyed our time in the park. Interesting how we travel such distances and sometimes miss gems so close to home. Congaree is a little known gem. We would recommend a visit.

Much of the area is covered by cypress trees

Congaree NP is home to several champion trees

Over the next few days, we spent most of our time preparing Fred and ourselves for our next NOMADS project. We departed SC on Valentine’s Day in route to LeBlanc, Louisianna. We stopped in Atmore, AL to do some shopping at Warehouse Market and Bakery. It’s one of our favorite Amish stores and we stocked up on some goodies. (Recommend a stop if you are driving by Exit 54 on I-65 in Alabama.) We will enjoy them while we are working at Uskichitto Retreat Center helping them make some repairs to their facilities and prepare for camping season.

In addition to delicious baked goods, Warehouse Market and Bakery has many varieties of products that you don’t usually find at grocery stores.

Some of our goodies from the Amish store. The Conecuh rolls are sections of Conecuh sausage wrapped in a light dough and baked. We buy them by the dozen and freeze them.

Where we will be volunteering the next couple of weeks.

Buenos Aires and the End of the Trip

February 13, 2025

After we caught our Uber to the Airport in Ushuaia on January 27, we discovered our flight had been delayed due to mechanical issues with a plane earlier in the day that backed things up. We flew from Ushuaia to Buenos Aries and arrived there about 11:30pm. We had a private tour scheduled for 9am on January 28. We used a tour company, Welcome Pickups, to show us around the city. They provided our transportation from the airport to the hotel, our tour guide for the day and our transportation to the international airport after the tour. We were very pleased with Welcome Pickups! We could never have seen so much of BA on our own. Our guide was so knowledgeable about his city and via e-mail we had discussed the types of things we wanted to see and he made suggestions taking into consideration our limited time.

One of the first places we stopped was the famous BA sign in the park. BA is known for all its parks and theaters (not movie theaters) with major productions.

Just driving through the theater district was a treat to see all the beautiful buildings. One of the old theaters, the Grand Splendid Theater, which opened in 1919 was closed and in 2000 was renovated, being converted into a bookstore – The El Ateneo Grand Splendid bookstore. The bookstore now draws visitors from all over the world, eager to see the theater’s original elements preserved in its structure and restored ceiling frescoes. The place was amazing – so beautiful. So glad they preserved all the beauty of the theater yet transitioned its use to a bookstore with areas to lounge and read as well as a coffee shop.

Probably the most ornate bookstore in the world

When the theater was turned into a bookstore they kept much of the history such as this stage lighting control panel.

Our regular readers know we like to visit historical churches, so we also visited the Metropolitan Cathedral of Buenos Aires. It is a beautiful building with lots of history. Pope Francis held mass here before moving to the Vatican in 2013.

This nativity is just one of many displays

Other popular spots we visited were the Caminito which is a colorful, historic street know for its painted houses, Woman’s Bridge and the Plaza de Mayo. Click on any of those link to learn more about the sites.

The colorful house in the Caminito district

Woman’s Bridge

The Plaza de Mayo is the oldest public square in Buenos Aires. It has been the center of many historical events in the city. Our guide told us about the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo who march around the square every thursday since 1977 demanding information about “disappeared” children from the last military dictatorship.

You could tell it was summer here from the produce stands

Argentina is also known for its beef cattle and the people are big meat eaters. Our guide also made reservations for us to have a wonderful steak dinner at his favorite restaurant. Wonderful meal.

After a little more sightseeing we were taken to the airport. We are glad we decided to go there early because when we arrived the line for the Delta counter already stretched around the corner. But we made our flight and safely back to Alabama where we said our goodbyes to Donna and Barry and drove back to South Carolina, ending another wonderful trip of a lifetime.

The picture only shows part of the long line at the airport.

Apparently we made it home just in time for our luggage to explode.

Leaving Antarctica

February 12, 2025

By the time we had finished dinner on January 24^th, the ship was on its way out of the sheltered waters back into the Drake Passage – sooner than we expected – so we had not started our motion sickness medicine early enough. Fortunately, the Passage was smoother this time – not Drake lake but definitely smoother.

We spent the next two days sailing northward to a warmer climate. In addition to more wonderful meals, the expedition staff provided us with more education sessions and activities. We have had a wonderful voyage. The Captain and all his guys on the bridge did an excellent job keeping us safe and positioning the ship so we could get all the photos we wanted. The housekeeping staff took exquisite care of us and our state rooms, always being so careful to tidy everything up while we were at meals. The chef and his crew were amazing and spoiled us with any little extras we might like. The expedition crew and zodiac drivers were great at spotting wildlife, birds and beautiful scenery so we could get the best pictures and always answered all our questions. It’s been a trip of a lifetime!! Huge thank you to Polar Latitudes. Can’t recommend them enough.

In one of our educational sessions the presenter displayed a life-sized replica of a snowy albatross.

One of the citizen science activities was observing and reporting clouds at the same time a weather satellite was overhead.

This is the science lab on board. The penguin counters and whale observers used it.

The staff wanted to make sure we were well prepared to leave the ship – on time, because the next group of passengers started loading about 8 hours after we left.

This coffee/hot chocolate that we used frequently would not fit in our luggage.

The ship had many pictures from cruises in other parts of the world. This was one of our favorites.

We arrived back in Ushuaia around 5pm on the 26^th. After one more night on board we disembarked the ship the next morning around 8am. Since our flight to Buenos Aires was not until that evening Polar Latitudes arranged to store our luggage downtown, so we were free to walk around town one last time. We bought a few more souvenirs, had lunch in Ushuaia and then called our Uber for a trip to the airport. The trip is not quite over yet because we have one more day to explore Buenos Aires.