travel – Page 12 – 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.

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.

Smooth sailing back in the Beagle Channel

Lobster thermidor for our last dinner on board

Dessert for our last dinner – key lime pie

We had to have our luggage tagged and ready first thing in the morning.

Cuverville Island and Fournier Bay

February 11, 2025

On January 24 we were again up early. We know we were very blessed that we didn’t sleep in sleeping bags on Antarctica last night because this morning there was ice on all the walkways and handrails of our ship and it was still very foggy. The Captain had everything cleared of ice quickly so we could safely be out on the decks. We were able to again see whales out for their morning breakfast. Such massive creatures. Love to listen to them blow.

By the end of the trip we made a habit of getting up early to look for whales.

Cuverville Island

Zodiac cruise to Cuverville Island

Today, in some ways, is a sad day. It is our last full day in Antarctica. Time has flown. We were again out for our morning landing, this time at Cuverville Island – our last landing. Cuverville Island is a dark, rocky island lying in Errera Channel. Two thirds of the island is covered in a permanent ice cap. This island has also been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because it supports a breeding colony of about 6,500 pairs of gentoo penguins – the largest colony for this species on the Antarctic Peninsula. We were very blessed to be able to visit here because it was just reopened to visitors the day before. It had been closed due to concern about Avian Influenza but was cleared and reopened. Other birds nesting at Cuverville include southern giant petrels, Antarctic Shags and Arctic Terns – all birds that we certainly were unfamiliar with prior to this trip and all very beautiful. There were massive whale bones on shore from previous whaling expeditions, and of course, many, many penguins.

Gentoo penguin nest. Notice the pebbles we mentioned yesterday.

Part of the gentoo colony

The penguins on Cuverville Island do not fear humans and will walk right up to them.

This will give you an idea of the size of a whale vertebrae.

It was a foggy trip back to the ship from the island.

The Arctic Tern migrates back and forth from the Antarctic to the Arctic twice a year – up to 25,000 miles a year.

This one walked right by us and into the water.

Aren’t they cute?

Fournier Bay

Too soon it was time for lunch on the ship. After repositioning to Fournier Bay, we had another afternoon zodiac cruise. The sun came out although there was still some fog around too. We were told that this was normal here. Fournier Bay measures about 8 x 3 nautical miles (15 x 6 km) and is known for having a large population of whales which are attracted to the extensive colonies of krill. There is no place to land due to the rugged shoreline but there was so much beauty as we navigated around the beautiful icebergs. We saw several seals of various types, birds, black ice, blue ice as well as amazing icebergs. The icebergs vary from some that are almost lace-like to all sorts of formations, to some that are just massive.

Our zodiac driver was fascinated with black ice. She said this block of ice was probably over a thousand years old.

One of the magnificent views in the bay. This ice shelf looked like ski slopes – except for the bottom.

A panorama of the beauty of Fournier Bay

The leopard seal from a moving zodiac

Back on the Ship

It almost brought tears to return to the ship this afternoon – our last outing. We had another wonderful dinner then the crew – including our cooks, servers, guys in the engine room, everyone – put on an amazing talent show, with singing, magic, dancing, you name it. It was great. No more tears. Then we walked outside and saw the most gorgeous sunset imaginable. Thank you, God, for letting visit this place!!