Day 1 - Hitting the Road

When Dad dropped me off where the group would depart, we waited for a couple of other people to arrive. While we waited, an Ohio News Network news van arrived also. The Servants Unite blog had mentioned the possibility of a news crew accompanying the group, but I did not know what that would entail, and sometime during the week, I had forgotten about them.

We packed all of our luggage into two vehicles, a car that the group leader would be driving, and a minivan that some of us would ride in. This trip was going to be a nonstop trip--no stop in Tuscaloosa on the way down, no stop in Tennessee on the way back. I estimated 16 hours, based on what the youth minister had told somebody at Hilltop Rescue back in July. It was after 8:00 A.M. when we prayed and got ready to go.

I wound up being "navigator" for parts of the trip after we reached Kentucky. Ohio was fairly familiar territory to the drivers on the trip, but we had road atlases and instructions printed from Google Maps. I had already taken this trip once, and there was another member of the team who had also been to Louisiana in April. We got to share some of our experiences together on the road.

The drive from Ohio was relatively uneventful, until we got backed up in traffic by two different accidents (and drove past a third one) near Birmingham, Alabama. After that, we passed a sign marking the "Alabama Adventure Parkway." We joked that we had seen enough tragic "adventures" for one day. We stopped in Alabama to eat dinner at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, then hit the road again.

In Mississippi, as we got close to the Louisiana border, the drivers struck up a trivia game using the walkie-talkie function built into their cellular phones. We traded questions from "naming the Seven Wonders of the World" to "giving the reading from the mile marker that we just passed."

I was right about not getting to see the devastation on the way into Louisiana--in the dark, it was difficult to see some of the damaged areas, although not impossible. The lights were on in some places, and not in others. As we searched for Madison Avenue in Chalmette, we had to switch from using the Google Maps instructions to landmarks and dead reckoning. Fortunately, the other "veteran" was in the van and reminded me of some of the landmarks that he remembered.

The only "problem" we had arriving in Louisiana was finding our rooms upstairs at C.F. Rowley Elementary. One of the workers told us to look for the rooms marked "Servants Unite!" but when we carried our luggage up--we couldn't find the signs. We returned downstairs, and by the time we got back upstairs with the next load, the signs had been posted.

I traded my mattress for a cot, because my body is too long to fit on the donated mattresses. There was a man from the news crew who was slightly shorter than me, so I thought it'd be a better fit for him. The cot was a better fit for me. I could stretch my legs all the way out after being in the van for so long, and not have my feet dangle off the end at all. I was so glad to be back, that I could not fall asleep easily tonight either.

There would be a difference this week. Last time, I forgot to get a camera. This time, I had brought two single-use cameras. I'd be taking pictures this week.