Preparing for and heading off to our first Sower project.

In September we traded in our Coachmen motorhome, pictured below on the left, for our current 2013 Tiffin Allegro RED motorhome, pictured below on the right.

RED stands for Real Engine Diesel. The Mirada was fine for us but since we are going to be traveling full time we thought it important for us to have a diesel engine. Diesel makes it easier to travel in hilly areas. They seem to climb long hills easier than the motorhomes with the gas engines. Since we’re going to be staying at different locations for a month at a time we thought a washer and a dryer in the motorhome was a necessity. Not all the locations SOWERs work at have laundry facilities available and we didn’t want to have to go look for a laundromat everytime we went to a new city. So, our new ( to us ) motorhome is diesel and has a washer and dryer – YAY! And, as an added bonus, this one has a half bath in addition to the full bath.

October 29, we left Milton, FL headed for our first SOWER ( http://www.sowerministry.org ) project in Conyers, Georgia; a suburb of Atlanta. For us to travel from Milton, FL to Atlanta it’s usually a 5-6 hour drive. We were able to turn this trip into a 9 hour drive. Below you will see some pictures that will help to show how this happened.

Shortly after leaving the campground in Milton, headed for the interstate, we got behind this, going…maybe 15 mph

Finally, the pontoon boat turned and we got behind this.

Who knew a little farther down the road, we’d get behind a semi truck that apparently had some mechanical problems? He had his flashers on and was only going about 20-25 mph. Turned out he was headed for the same truck stop we were headed for so he could get repairs and we could top off the diesel in the motorhome. At this point we’ve traveled well over our usual hour to get to the interstate and we hadn’t made it there yet.

We finally get on the interstate and now this. A semi had turned over on it’s side on the side of the road and there was a crew was cleaning up the mess while traffic was down to one lane.

Finally starting to move again and we run into some road work with traffic down to one lane causing another slow down. We get past that and come into another slow down. This time there was a car on fire off the side of the road. And… we get to Atlanta just in time for rush hour, if there is such a thing in Atlanta. It seems like Atlanta is always rush hour.

We did finally arrive at our project site and I may add just in time for dinner. We are at Camp Westminster in Conyers Georgia. The next posts will be about Camp Westminster and Conyers Georgia. I hope you find them interesting.

Below, I’ve added some pictures of our first time hooking up our car to be towed. It took him a little while but Dave did a great job and a great job driving the whole distance. ( Did you know that the vehicle you’re towing is now referred to as the TOAD?)