After our three wonderful weeks at ECHO in North Fort Myers working with a super team, we needed to return to Alabama to do some mundane stuff. On the way north we stopped in Tampa to visit with some friends who were at the RV show there. We really didn’t see or do much of interest at the show except the people we went to visit. It was great to see friends from all over the country.
Other than our friends, this was our favorite thing at the RV Show
Back in Alabama we had doctor visits, dental visits, court hearings for the aunt’s estates, and Anne worked on many NOMADS Board items. We also made a trip to South Carolina to spend a few days with Randy and Debra – always a special time. While there Randy and Max installed a rack on the van that will give us a little more storage and tool carrying possibilities.
Long drive back to Alabama. Even Gumby got bored.
It sure is nice to have a mechanic in the family.
We decided that we needed a little down time, so we left Alabama early to stop at Jekyll Island for a few days on the way to Enterprise Florida for our next NOMADS project. Driving the van, we decided to take the back roads and drove US Hwy 280 from south of Birmingham to Pitts, Georgia – a tiny little Georgia town with a neat Harvest Host site, Oliver Farm Artisan Oils. The owner was super nice to open his store on Sunday afternoon so we could make some purchases. They make pecan oil and pecan flour as well as other specialty oils and items which we are looking forward to trying. Georgia is the number one producer of pecans so there are ample resources for the oil. They extract the oil and then take the “meat” that is left and make flower from it. Unfortunately, they did not have any pecan flour in stock so we will have to order some. We have several recipes we are anxious to try. We will let you know how they turn out. From Pitts we landed on Jekyll Island, a place many of you have visited but one we always just drove past with the intent of visiting someday. Today is someday.
Oliver Farm’s store is located right beside a quiet part of US Hwy 280. For anyone near Birmingham, the words “quiet” and “280” would never be used together.
On the way to Jekyll Island we went through Plains, Georgia and stopped at the Jimmy Carter National Historical Park to get our National Park passport stamped.
This Jimmy Carter quote sounds very familiar to us NOMADS.
Peanut Stress Relievers seemed to be appropriate souvenirs for this park.
Jekyll Island Campground is our home for a few days. The sites are a little close here.
It was another wonderful week. It began with another inspirational worship service with the ECHO Crew Monday morning. It was so great for our team to become part of the ECHO community over the past three weeks. After devotion we all started back to work, basically where we left off on Thursday.
Max and Anne returned to the Appropriate Technology Center bathroom and finished the removal of the ceiling and declared that job complete only to find that we also had to install the new ¾ inch plywood on the walls and ceiling. We worked with two ECHO volunteers on that and made two new friends. Anne moved onto other work and Steve took her place for the last few days. Our portion of the bathroom work was completed Thursday morning. The plumbing and the rest will be completed by other ECHO volunteers. We learned at a Volunteer Brown Bag Lunch on Wednesday that Worldwide ECHO has only a total of 75 employees. Greater than 50% of the work of ECHO to end hunger around the world is done by volunteers. Pretty amazing and we feel honored to be part of their team.
We thought we were finished with the AT bathroom when all the plywood was off the walls and ceiling. Gumby struck again.
The AT bathroom with new (heavy) plywood walls and ceiling
Also finished this week was the bridge between the visitor center and the library. A good portion of the team worked on that bridge at some point so I won’t list names for fear of missing someone. However, the final four that spent so much time on that project were Dan and Marlis, Phil and Steve. They did an excellent job rebuilding the bridge.
The bridge team getting close to finished
The finished bridge. This was probably the most challenging task the team performed.
Almost everyone on the team worked on the new plant tables at some point. The highlight of that work this week was the moving the plants off the rusty old tables, removing the old table tops, then moving the new structures into place and placing the plants on the new tables. The last two tables were quite large and HEAVY! Eight of our twelve team members moved the first one and had to stop and put it on the ground and rest numerous times while moving from where they were built to the propagation area. We were all huffing and puffing and straining and didn’t know how we were going to move the last one into place. Susan enlisted the help of our two ECHO volunteers who worked with us on the bathroom. It was totally amazing. None of us could have imagined the difference it made to have two more helpers. It lightened the load for us all to a level we could much more easily handle. We all agreed there was a big lesson to be learned for all of us. It would even make a good sermon. More hands certainly made the work so much lighter.
The long and heavy potting tables being covered with a wire screen after we carried them to the propagation area
Replacing the plants on the tables.
There was also a lot more accomplished at the A-frame cabin. We totally stripped the second floor. All the appliances and cabinets that were removed from the walls were taken to storage. All the trim was removed, the tile removed from the walls and all the floor tile broken up and removed. The tile was very labor intensive work done with sledge hammers, scrapers, pry bars and brute strength. One half of the flooring was on top of cement board that was screwed down with hundreds of screws that also had to be removed. Lots for sore arms and backs at the completion of that work. Most of the team worked on that big project at some point.
We were tasked with removing the kitchen cabinets.
Wall cabinets gone, now for the base cabinets.
Along with all the debris we had to move 2 refrigerators, two stoves and a dishwasher down these steps.
Marlis felt like she was on an HGTV show.
For some reason Anne was chosen to demo the inside of the built-in cabinets.
It took most of the team to finally remove all the tile.
The last section of tile
And the very last task was to remove the hundreds of screws.
The a-frame house at the end of the projects
There was also more pressure washing this week again with most of us doing that at some time too. We were glad to be able to get the buildings looking better in preparation for the 40th birthday celebration for ECHO taking place in February. Wish we could be here for that celebration. Wednesday night we had a team dinner at the campground with every one contributing to the potluck. It was a time for the team and celebration for all we accomplished. Thursday we celebrated again with ECHO as they treated us to a Chick-Fil-A luncheon. Another special time with the team and our ECHO friends. This was one of those projects where it’s very had to say goodbye to everyone. But it had to occur and we left Riverside Campground this morning and arrived in Tampa shortly before lunch.
Lots and lots of pressure washing
Our thank you card from the ECHO staff
One of our favorite places to stop between ECHO and the campground is Rooster’s Produce. They have great tropical produce and the best pralines and cream ice cream we have ever eaten. But we were good and only went there 5 times in the 3 weeks.
We are boondocking at the state fairgrounds and attending the RV Show until Sunday when we will be back on the road to Alabama. It’s been a great week! Safe travels to all the NOMADS on the road this weekend.
We have had several folks who saw news of the tornadoes in southwest Florida contact us to make sure we were okay. We are. A cold front passed through this part of Florida this morning spawning a few tornadoes and damaging an RV resort as well has several other locations. A tornado warning was issued for the area to our southwest so the team turtled up our RVs and gathered in the nearest substantial structure – the bathhouse/laundry. Fortunately, all the severe storms passed either to our north or south.
Thank you for your concern and prayers.
The team gathered in a safer place
Storm passing us by
After the storms were gone we cooked one of our favorite dishes – Max’s Mother’s Sausage and Grits.
Today has been another beautiful winter day in Fort Myers, FL. We have really had beautiful weather since arriving, with only an occasional shower. Watching the weather over the remainder of the country we are certainly concerned for everyone experiencing such a rough winter. Y’all be very careful as you are out and about!!
Last Saturday was the day we elected to celebrate Max’s birthday. So along with catching up on the laundry, we cooked up some of our red snapper that we brought from Gulf Shores. It was so good! Anne also made Max a from scratch vanilla pie using his Mom’s recipe. It was a first for her because we always just got our pie fix when we visited Juno. She was quite the pie maker. Thanks to Debra who shared the recipe and skill, pies will now be back in our diet – but not too often. Saturday afternoon we took a nice hike with two of our team members in one of the county parks. It was such a nice day.
Anne making a pie crust with remote technical support from Debra
The delicious vanilla pie brought back fond memories.
Enjoying one of the nearby hiking trails
As always, each morning starts with a team devotion.
We again began the week with devotion with the Echo family – such a good time of worship and song. After devotion we all headed back to work with Max and Anne back to the duck pond dock to meet with Elliott. Over the weekend it was decided that the dock looked so good that Echo wanted to replace all the wood above the deck of the dock. That meant we went back into demo mode. Marcia and Phil joined us to help unload all the new material and work on the rebuild. By Wednesday we were ready to install the new balusters and we set up an assembly line with Marcia pre-drilling, Anne starting the screws and Max and Phil installing. We were surprised at how fast that went and by Wednesday afternoon the deck was completed.
Removing the last baluster
The dock at the end of Monday
Removing the old posts
As with most things at ECHO we try to save hardware for re-purposing.
Phil and Marcia cutting the balusters for the dock
We predrilled the balusters to keep them from splitting when we installed them.
We installed over a hundred new balusters.
Finally finishing the dock
Finished dock
This was our audience for the dock project. Periodically they would burst into raucous laughter and we never knew what we had done that was so funny.
A soon as we finished the dock this ibis flew up, landed and posed for a picture. Then it pooped on the brand new railing and flew off.
A new assignment the team began this week was the cleaning out of the A-Frame house used by interns and other guests. At some point the second floor kitchen will be moved downstairs and the bedrooms on the first floor moved upstairs. Voni and Mary began that process of packing up everything into storage boxes and others helped out taking the furniture apart and except for the appliances everything is now in storage.
Mary and Voni spent much of the week packing the contents of the a-frame house. The house is scheduled for remodeling.
The beds were assembled with a wide variety of fasteners.
There were three rooms of bunk beds that had to be moved.
Beds loaded for moving to storage
Our moving dream team showing the contents of the a-frame they packed and moved this week.
The team also built additional plant tables – these even larger than last weeks and dug and set new footing for a hoop house in the propagation area. Work continued on the large bridge with all the supporting beams being replaced. That was a huge, heavy job!
Susan and Kevin preparing tubes for more potting tables
They were really heavy
The team built two more even longer potting tables.
The team also dug and set new footings for a hoop house
The bridge behind the visitor center has been a tough project because of its long span. It has seven beams – each made from two long 2x12s.
Max and Anne began the demo of a bathroom in the Appropriate Technology area with Elliott. All the fixtures and walls were removed. That was also a very physical job. Anne was a little stiff on Friday. All that is left to remove next week is the ceiling. Don’t think we will be involved in that rebuild, but we do enjoy demo.
Our task for Thursday was to remove the fixtures, walls and ceilings from this bathroom in the Appropriate Technology area so it can be rebuilt.
It took longer than we expected because the plywood walls were put up with lots of trim screws, then painted over.
By the end of the day we had the bathroom emptied and all the walls stripped.
The bathroom walls at the end of the day
For Anne Friday and much of today was spent on NOMADS business but she did take time this morning to host a cheese grits cooking school. With Marcia, Mary and Voni, Anne had fun showing them how southerners make cheese grits. Phil who said he didn’t like grits, decided the ladies cheese grits were pretty good. Anne also shared Juno’s sausage and grits recipe and the ladies are looking forward to giving that a try too. Some of the team also played some corn hole and ladder golf this afternoon. This is a great team. We are again enjoying our time at ECHO.
We are still fascinated by the variety of fruits grown at ECHO.
Kevin and Susan hosted a team campfire Thursday night after a tough week.
Anne sharing her technique for cooking cheese grits with some of the team members.
RVing With a Purpose 