Tag: Louisiana State Park System

A Return Visit to Sam Houston Jones State Park

Among many other things, our group built a fence at the entrance, repainted the office, built tent pads, built a 500’ fishing pier/boardwalk, repainted signs, cleaned up tons of debris, grinded countless stumps, planted wildflowers, refinished playground equipment, cleared and rebuilt the Orange Trail, built culvert dams, and painted a flag pole.

It was a project that was extremely gratifying.

I think even more so for Sandy and I because we have friends in the area and we helped with relief efforts in the area a couple of weeks after Laura came through.

Read More

A Different Kind of Beautiful

When we first arrived at Sam Houston Jones State Park in Lake Charles, Louisiana, we could see that the park had been severely damaged by the two hurricanes that came through the area back in the late summer of 2020.  We were told that 90% of the trees in the park had been destroyed.  Although I had heard that statistic many times since the project had started, I’m not sure that it really hit me until that short ride with Lori.

Even with every time that one of the churches or community groups would come in to feed us, the people would all tell us the same thing.  Yet still, I don’t think that I was really able to comprehend the extent of damage until I heard it from Lori.  Not that I didn’t believe the other people from the community.  I guess it’s just that when you hear it from someone near and dear to you, it’s only then that it really hits home.  The raw emotion of the moment is something that I won’t soon forget.

Read More

I’ve Been So Busy!

I really liked getting to meet so many new people in Lake Charles.  I met Janet and Amy and Dave and Stan and Eric and Marty and Barrett and Cody and Brittany.  Barrett and Cody and Brittany even came to visit me in the house on wheels.  They all said that they were there to do a podcast with daddy, but I know that they just used that as an excuse to hang out with me for a little while, but I’ll let daddy think that they were there for his podcast.  I even got to talk a little bit on the podcast that daddy did with Barrett.  Daddy didn’t seem really happy about that, but I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that I was there too.

I also loved getting to see people that I already knew again!  I got to see Phil and Shar and Mike and Terri and John and Karen and Orien and Jeff and Susan again.  Phil and Shar and Mike and Terri all came to visit me in the house on wheels too.  I made sure that I really rubbed up on Phil and Shar so that Domino knew that his mommy and daddy were with me.  I had more visitors in the house on wheels during this project than ever before!

I also got to see Lori a couple of times again when we were in Lake Charles, she even came to the park to visit me in the house on wheels.

It was the greatest thing ever!  I love getting visitors in the house on wheels because they all pet me really good.

Read More

Mike and Terri McIlraith – Fellow Full-timers with a Passion to Give Back

Mike and Terri are fellow full-time RVers who have an incredible passion to give back.  We first met them in Antigo, Wisconsin during our first A Year to Volunteer project at the Raptor Education Group.  Sandy and I arrived at the project midway through.  We were working on different parts of the project, so we really didn’t have much of an opportunity to get to know them.

Read More
Loading
Skip to content