Arrival

We are now in place at our SOWER project.  Because we were camped overnight only a couple miles away, it didn’t take long to get here.  To avoid coming too early, we stopped first at Lake Waccamaw State Park, on the other side of the lake.

Lake Waccamaw is the largest natural lake in North Carolina.  As such, it deserves its own state park.  This state park has the features we have come to expect from NC state parks, including trails, campground, a body of water, and a large, fully staffed visitor center.  Oh, and yes... mosquitoes.  Little ones that swarm around the face and eyes.  We started hiking one of the trails but turned back when we started getting dive bombed by those little whiners.

We asked the rangers about kayaking in the area.  One of them printed out a whole guide on NC waterways.  Paper.  Music to Deb’s ears.  We’ll have to peruse that to find some good locations.

We then drove to the Boys and Girls Home of North Carolina, our home for the next three weeks.  We met Lee, their volunteer coordinator, and Ron, our SOWER group leader, who guided us to our parking place, in a row of RV hookup spots behind their exhibition barn.  Apparently, horses are a big thing here, and this enormous barn is used for horse shows and gatherings.  This section of the campus is called the “farm”, as it was once an operating farm.  Over the years they  eliminated all other farm animals and this became an equestrian farm.  This is owned by the Boys and Girls Home of North Carolina, but I’m a little fuzzy yet on how this is connected to troubled Boys and Girls.

Since we had a little time to ourselves, I launched the drone and took a few aerial pictures.  The exhibition barn is the large building, and our RV can be seen at the bottom center of the picture.  There’s an outdoor paddock and several long buildings with horse stalls (as always, clicking on the picture will enlarge it for more detail).

Towards the lake is the main campus, which is shown in the fly-over below. There’s housing for boys and girls, a chapel, dining hall, a small middle school and high school, and a bunch of other buildings.  Quite a nice campus sitting next to the lake there.

We took a bike ride, taking the road next to the lake in front of the campus here and following it until it ended at the dam, a distance of about seven miles.  In all, the lake is 24 miles around, and having been to the state park in one direction and the dam in the other direction, we have encircled nearly the entire lake.  Most of the road goes behind row of lakefront homes, some very large and fancy, and some older and smaller.  On the other side of the road is a large swamp, with bald cypress trees, lots of turtles sitting on fallen logs, and quite a few alligators.  So, just a narrow piece of land along this side of the lake, with just enough room for homes and the road.

Lee took us on a tour of the place and talked about various programs here.  We then met at Ron and Reenie’s RV for a spaghetti dinner.  After that, an introduction to some of the projects we will be working on.  Sounds like there’s a lot of stuff that needs painting. There’s three couples on this project, ourselves, Ron and Reenie, and Jim and Chris.  Looking forward to getting to know them over the next three weeks.