Jim and Cathy's Christmas 2005 (Tried to update a previous post, and cant get the date back to the original! sorry...)

Well, can you believe it's been two years since we picked up roots and began traveling? We've been from the extreme North West (The Olympic Peninsula),to the South West (San Diego) and to the North East (Down-East Maine). Now it looks like we'll be going to the extreme south east the first of the year.

Currently, we are in Heiskell, Tennessee, which is essentially Knoxville. We have truly enjoyed our wandering, and have even remembered to evaluate places as settling spots when (if?) we decide its time to "Park It". Although Knoxville itself is not on our list, the general area will receive favorable consideration. There are more places on our "Been There, Done That, don't need to do it again" list than on the "Gotta go back" list, but so far there is no single "This is the Place" spot. Yet. And, we haven't been everywhere we intend to go. Such as Yellowstone (Haven't made it there yet) and a trip to Alaska. Which means we get to go back to Canada, where we spent a large part of this last summer.
So, where have we been this year? We started in New Orleans, with a visit from Josh. Then on to Carlsbad Caverns, and to Santa Fe for a spirituality conference. After a quick stop in the Farmington area to visit our stuff, we moved on to Las Vegas to horse sit, and then on to Santa Barbara for one of Cathy's classes. We then followed the coast highway up to Monterey, and a visit to the aquarium. From there it was a visit with the grand kids in the Sacramento area, then a short stop at Mount Shasta en route to Madras, Oregon, where all our mail goes. After building a patio for Jim's sister, and helping Jim's brother move from Las Vegas to Roseburg, Oregon, our friend Linda joined us for a week in the North East corner of Oregon, at Wallowa Lake. We then went on up to spend some time in Sand Point and Bonners Ferry, Idaho, for a few weeks.
Leaving Idaho, we went east to Montana and a visit to Glacier National Park. Good thing we tow our Durango behind the motor home, "The Beast" would not have been allowed over the Highway to the Sun! We enjoyed Glacier so much, we went north into Canada to visit the Canadian part, Waterton Park. That was so nice we continued up to Canmore, Alberta, which we used as a base camp for visiting Banff National Park, including Lake Louise. It was as pretty as Cathy remembered from her after high-school trip just a "few" years ago!
From there we crossed the Rocky Mountains, and spent some time at a nice little campground in Revelstoke, while visiting the Okanagan Valley, up and down the Canadian part of the Columbia River. Returning to the lower 48, we spent some time in the Spokane area, but then returned to Madras to have the cooling system on the Durango rebuilt. One new water pump, fan clutch, and radiator later, we headed down to Crater lake, which was snowed in the last time we went past. We stayed at Diamond Lake for a week, then moved on to the Roseburg area to visit with Jim's brother. From there we spent some time along the McKenzie River, then back to Madras to Park the Motorhome for a quick trip to another of Cathy's classes in Connecticut. After returning, Cathy had minor surgery on her foot to remove a carbuncle, which resulted from a spill at Crater Lake. Two weeks later, we headed for Farmington again, with the goal of reducing from two storage units to only one. Success! Thanks to the gracious assistance of Bill and Linda, who allowed us to use their yard for a moving sale, what we didn't sell was repacked into a single unit--and no trips to the dump! (Well, only one small trip...)

Leaving Farmington before it got cold (and before they finished the road work at Bill and Linda's) we traveled to the Bosque Del Apache, a bird sanctuary on the Rio Grande near Socorro, New Mexico. Since we were so close, we took the opportunity to visit the Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope on the plains of Magdelena , and took the self guided walking tour. Amazing! From there we went to Alamogordo, NM, for a visit to White Sands National Monument, where Jim was able to climb the sand dune that defeated him as a child- and has a picture to prove it.
When we left Alamogordo, we went on to Livingston, Texas to visit the home park of an outfit called Escapees, a club for full time RV'ers. We were so impressed we joined, then traveled to their RV park in Tennessee-which happened to be in Knoxville, which we wanted to visit. On the way, we traveled the entire Natchez Trace Parkway, from Natchez Mississippi to Nashville, TN. We have spent a month around Knoxville, seeing the area, from the Cumberland Gap to Pigeon Forge. There are areas we like better than others, but by and large we are impressed with the area. We may even get to meet Josh's girl friend next week, she will be visiting her parents in Kentucky for Christmas, just a short drive from here!

When we leave here the first of the year, we are going to Key West. We are not running from the cold, we have connected with Habitat for Humanity, to do some clean up after hurricane Wilma. As long as we can be helpful there, we'll stay for a couple of months. We don't have any firm plans after that, except for a habitat for humanity build going on in Leyland, Mississippi, in March. Leyland is along the Mississippi River, which we intend to follow to the headwaters at Lake Itasca in Minnesota . Since our motor home is an Itasca, it kinda feels like a pilgrimage! And then, on to Alaska?

We'd like to wish all of our friends and family a Merry Christmas, and a happy and prosperous New Year. If we get near any of you this year, we'll try to stop by and visit for a while-and if you find yourselves in our neck of the woods, either accidentally or on purpose, please stop and visit!
Oh. This email address is still good (jimandcathygreen@earthlink.net), but now we have another one also! jimandcathygreen@escapees.com
We check both of them regularly!

WHere are we?

For those of you we forgot to tell, we have been in the Florida Keys working with Habitat for Humanity in Hurricane recovery. Hurricane Wilma hit here in October, it was a catagory 2 but the storm surge caught everyone by surprise. It didnt make as many headlines as Katrina (Possibly because the Mayor and the Governor aren't Idiots), but it affected peoples lives just as much as Katrina. Its been said it's the first time the Gulf and the Atlantic met on land in the Keys...Aparrently the low pressure on the Atlantic side sucked the gulf waters across teh Keys....some people reported seing the shallow gulf side looking like mud flats, before it all came back across the Keys back to where it belonged. How did we end up here? We were looking for a way to help, but didnt want to just show up somewhere and be in the Way. The habitat for Humanity web page showed an ongoing opportunity here in the Keys, and when we contacted them they said 'Come on Down! Turns out this HfH office has been doing disaster recovery since Hurricane George in 1998. Their resale store is actually in a county building, and they hosted FEMA, the SBA, and other disaster recovery agencies, which provided a kind of "One Stop Shopping" for the local folks. THere are 25 or so RV's, ranging from a 15 ft A-Frame pop-up to a 45 ft custom motor home with a 30ft trailer equipped with a portable workshop on site at the Habitat building. Not the most fancy accomodations we have enjoyed in 2 years, but all our neighbors are great people and fun to be around.

Things are going OK here, we are getting a lot of stuff done for folks who cant do it for themselves. A typical job is to pull out the drywall to above the floodline, (usually about 4 ft), remove anything in the walls, let it dry out, spray for mould, then re-drywall and finish. Oh, yeah, any electrical device that was underwater ususally has to be replaced. this often means redoing at least part of the system, since to repair it requires bringing it to current code standards. Some of the stuff we are looking at probably(!) wasn't done by an electrician in the first place, so there are some interesting challenges!

Most of the folks we are helping would be good candidates for the home makeover show. One has terminal cancer and cant get to the upstairs living area that was undamaged; one is a widowed lady barely able to hang on to her property, with the taxes getting so high, one is a disabled gentleman who keeps trying to get us down the street to help his friends who "need it worse than I do!" Of course, there are some who made it into the system who could probably do it without our help, but we have adapted a quote from the Crusades..."God will recognize his own". We just do our best to make it nicer than when we got there...

The weather here has been warm and humid, ranging from highs of mid 70's with 80% and better humidity to low 60's. Its funny when it gets down to the 60's, you can tell right away who the locals are! They dont all wear Parkas, but there is an amusing assortment of coats/jackets/sweaters that come out when it cools off! all the snowbirds continue with shorts and windbreakers!

Looks like we will be leaving here the first of the month We'll be working our way to the north, to be in Leyland, MS, early March for a Habitat build. Folks who are here who have done both keep telling us it's totally different at a build than in Disaster recovery, so we are looking forward to seeing how that goes.

Not sure where we will be spending the summer, but long term thinking (not firm enough to be called Plans at this point!) have us following the Mississippi River to the headwaters this spring, then working our way back to the west. We have thought about Alaska this summer, but are watching gas prices before we make a decision. We still plan on getting to Yellowstone one day!

Jim and Cathy
jimandcathygreen@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~thegeekandhippie/
BLOG: http://thegeekandhippie.blogspot.com/

Habitat work

We are keeping busy here! I did electrical work today (Have any idea what salt water does to thin walled metallic conduit?) but it looks like I get to head a crew to do some floor work tomorrow. I know living in the Keys sounds exotic and like everyone should be rich, but there are lots of elderly or handicapped on a fixed income, who were here long before it became a vacation paradise, who are living on the fringes and about to go under. Yesterday we were doing drywall at a house for an older man who is getting Chemo, and can no longer make it to the upstairs living area, but his downstairs room had 4 ft of water during the Hurricane and the drywall had to come out up to that level. It may not be much in the scheme of things down here, but it does feel like we are making a difference in some people's lives, anyway.

Here we are...

We have just arrived in the Florida Keys, to help Habitat for Humanity with Hurricane Wilma cleanup. Got here at noon, and already have put in a full days work! They were wiring some power stands for RV's, so we jumped in and helped out, so now we have power for our stay! Looks like there is lots of things to do, so we wont be bored waiting around for something to do. We are actually at Long Pine Key, about 30 Miles from Key West, and the closer we got, the more and more evidence of storm damage we saw. Aparrently the tidal surge reached over 9 ft in some parts of this Key, and things were pretty well messed up. We told them we would work at least a month, possible up to the end of Feburary, but we have signed up for a Habitat for Humanity build project in Leyland, Mississippi, in early March. That just happens to be on the way for our next adventure: Following the Mississippi River to its source, at Lake Itasca, MN. That is, unless we get a better idea first....

Jim and Cathy
jimandcathygreen@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~thegeekandhippie/
BLOG: http://thegeekandhippie.blogspot.com/