Tag: Sam Houston Jones State Park

Dan and Sandy – Louisiana, Texas Beaches, and Mardi Gras

We’ll be in Galveston for just over a month, staying at the Galveston Island KOA as well as Galveston Island State Park.  During the month, I have a total of nine book signing and speaking events between Kroger and the KOA.

Between the activities at the campground and Mardi Gars, Sandy and I have been really active since we have arrived at the KOA.  It’s a great campground with an amazing staff, and tons of activities for all ages.

We love coming to Galveston.  It’s is such a cool little city.  It’s an island town with a charming little downtown area.  Sandy has even mentioned that this may be the spot that we settle down at after if we decide to trade in the nomad lifestyle for something less mobile.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Gratitude of a Community

A Year to Volunteer has taken over Sam Houston Jones State Park for the next two weeks!  This group of ninja volunteers is ready to help with the continued restoration efforts from the devastation caused by Hurricanes Laura and Delta in 2020.

This beautiful park needs a lot of TLC.

Sandy and I were here for a short time between the two storms and the one thing that stood out then was the resilience of this community.

This time around, it’s the gratitude of this community.

From the owner of The Laundromat in Sulphur who let us do Laundry for free when he heard that we were helping, to the A-Plus RV Park who let us dump and fill our tanks, to the Deputy Sheriff who is patrolling the park, to the members of the Henning United Methodist church that we attended with our dear friend, Lori Carter Pritchett who all thanked us for being here to lend a hand, it was nothing but gratitude that was expressed to us.

The material things in this community may have been crushed by those storms, but its spirit was not.

Many people outside the area have forgotten about it, but there is still so much more work to be done.

You may not be able to volunteer for two weeks, but there are other ways to help.

Research how to give and how to help.  I’ll try to get some of our friends in the area to put some links to ways to help in the comments.

Just because it’s not in the news everyday doesn’t mean that the job is complete.

Do what you can with what you have.

Peace.

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