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Back in August as we were starting to make our winter travel plans in Florida, we came to the realization that we had waited too long to book any place for an extended length of time like 4 to 5 months and we were going to need to piece together some shorter stays at multiple places to cover the winter season. One option I had looked into was the RV Care-A-Vanner program that is part of Habitat for Humanity. While there are over 1500 Habitat affiliates within the USA, there are only a few dozen of these that are part of this special program. The basic premise of the Habitat for Humanity is to help build affordable housing in the area the affiliate is located. The RV Care-A-Vanner program was designed to bring in people that travel in RVs to spend a couple weeks in their community and help with the building projects they have underway. We found one in Vero Beach Florida which is about 80 miles further down the east coast of the state and signed up for a two week assignment in the first half of March.
We have only done two other RV-Care-A-Vanner (CAV) builds so we are by no means “experts”. Our first time was back in 2017, up in Mount Vernon Washington - north of Seattle. For that build, we only had one other RV couple with us during that work period - but I’ll note that we became lifelong friends with Dick and Wardene and still visit with them during our travels. Our second one being 2 years later at the special 30th anniversary build event in North Fort Myers Florida. This one was very unique because there were over 110 rigs with close to 220 people part of 18 different build sites.
Regardless of the situation of a particular build location, we had really enjoyed the camaraderie of working with other people and it feels good to be able to help in some small way with a home for some deserving family. Plus, we are rather proficient at lots of different construction jobs whether it is a detailed task or simply needing some brute force to move some materials around a job site. We just need to remember it has been nearly 5 years since we last did this and the body might not have as much brute force as it did in years past!
It was a pretty easy drive down Interstate 95 from Titusville to Vero Beach. Our accommodations for the 2 weeks was at a small “campground” located behind the Indian River Habitat for Humanity ReStore facility north of downtown Vero Beach. There were already 5 rigs in place when we arrived Sunday afternoon and we backed into an open spot and setup camp. Each site has water, electric and sewer, although we needed to use all of our sewer hose sections to reach the dump port. Over the course of the afternoon and evening, we started to meet some of the other 7 couples that we will be spending lots of time with. The picture below is from our last night of our two weeks.
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| RV Care-A-Vanners at Vero Beach |
The camping setup is pretty nice. The campsites aren’t free, but at $10 per night, they are a bargain. One of the buildings on the property has a very large CAV Lounge that is only a few hundred feet from our rigs. It includes a large room with sofas, TV, Wi-Fi, a large table we can use to eat meals together if we choose. Other tables to work on puzzles or projects. There is a full kitchen with fridge, stove, microwave and dishwasher and it is large enough to have quite a few people doing meal prep at the same time. There are even restrooms with showers. For those CAV volunteers that come in small RVs that don’t have all these conveniences, it can help make their stay that much better.
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| Camping Area Behind the ReStore |
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| Main Room in CAV Lounge |
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| Part of the Kitchen Area |
As is fairy typical for these builds, our work week will be 5 days but shifted to Tuesday thru Saturday. By working one day over the weekend, this improves our odds of getting to meet the future homeowner who likely works a real job during the week. We are told we will meet in the administration building on Monday morning for a quick introduction to the work that takes place at this Habitat for Humanity affiliate in Indian River County where Vero Beach is located. We learn a lot about this affiliate and how comprehensive their mission is within the community. Vero Beach is a rather affluent area but this has the drawback of pricing out many of the people needed to work in the community at stores, restaurants and the like. The upside is there are lots of wealthy donors that realize the need for affordable housing and the large staff at this affiliate has become extremely adept at getting lots of donated money, time and building supplies.
After the presentation is over the 16 CAV volunteers stick around to learn what our job assignments might look like for the next 2 weeks. There appears to be lots of varied opportunities for us in terms of type of work. There are numerous homes in various stages of construction, and other existing homes that are simply getting a makeover to repair damage. They is also the Habitat ReStore that needs volunteers that might prefer not swinging hammers at a construction site. As it turns out, we will get to experience all of these aspects in the next 2 weeks. There is a downside to the schedule, we need to be at the given job site by 7:30 AM! None of the work locations are all that far, but it will require us to be setting our alarm clock to get up that early! But on the positive side, our workday will be done at noon which will leave us the better part of the day to explore what else is in the area of Vero Beach.
Back at the rig, we have lunch and decide where we want to explore first with the rest of Monday at our disposal. Pelicans Island National Wildlife Refuge is about 10 miles from our campsite on the barrier island that is across the Indian River. It’s hard to say how many National Wildlife Refuges we have visited over the years but this one is notable because it is the very first one established back in 1903.
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| Entrance at Pelican Island NWR |
There are a couple of 3 mile trails in the refuge. We figured one of them would suffice to get a feel for the place and head to the parking lot for the Joe Michael Memorial Trail. There is also a short walk out to a boardwalk and observation deck that overlooks the river. We decide to take this 3/4 mile detour first. Near the trailhead is something very unusual - at least to us. It is a palm tree that has some large roots growing along its trunk. The sign explains that this sabal palm has a strangler fig tree growing on it. However this fig did not start its life on the ground next to the palm and start to grow up the trunk. Instead, it started as a sticky seed, likely left by a bird, at the top of the palm and air roots sprouted and worked their way down the trunk of the palm and rooted. Eventually the fig may grow roots that cover the entire palm and only the fig tree will survive.
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| Strangler Fig Starts Its Mission |
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| Lizard Watches Us |
The walk along the boardwalk is pretty neat since all of the National Wildlife Refuges names and dates are carved into the deck boards in the order they were established. Starting with the newest and ending with Pelican Island NWR being the final board before the observation deck. There were many of the names we recognized as having visited but there were many more we need to visit.
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| The Oldest NWR Planks |
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| View from Observation Deck |
The loop hike we want to explore starts off of the trail to the boardwalk. The trail itself is in great shape but it does have swampy areas on both side of the trail. We see a few makeshift plank walkways that head deeper into the swamp but we decide to not risk falling into the muck or coming upon a gator.
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| Where the Loop Begins/Ends |
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| Spurred Butterfly Pea in Bloom |
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| Walkway to the Unknown |
There is a more substantial boardwalk dedicated to the man this trail is named for. Since this one seemed more official, we head out for a look. We head back around the loop and make it back to the car. It was a short visit but we enjoyed Pelican Island and learning about the origins of the National Wildlife Refuge system.
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| An Official Boardwalk |
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| View from Boardwalk |
Back at camp that evening, the group gathered in the camping area to watch one of the spaceship launches. Even though we aren’t as close to the launch pad as we are when we are in Titusville, we still got a decent view of it as it streaked across the night sky.
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| Rocket Streaks Across the Night Sky |
Tuesday morning our alarm jolted us awake at a time of day we typically don’t experience. Having been retired for over a decade, getting up for work will be difficult for us. Our job for the day would take us to the town of Fellsmere - northwest of camp. There was an existing home that had some renovation work completed and our job for the morning was to get 2 coats of white paint on all the window and door trim as well as the front porch columns and ceiling and the trim on a shed out back. Eight of the CAV volunteers headed out to see if we could get the work done in 4 hours. Since it was our first time working together, we took the opportunity to learn about the other volunteers and hear about their travels and other Habitat builds. The first coat of paint went up fairly quickly and it was easy to tell where we needed to paint.
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| Our Mid-Morning Break from Painting |
After a mid morning break, we start the 2nd coat. This proved to be challenging since it was hard to tell what was already painted and with 8 of us scurrying around the house, we needed to always double check what parts had already been painted. I’m pretty sure everything got the required 2 coats of paint, but there might have been something’s that received 3 coats. It was a fun and bonding morning for our work crew.
Day two was originally planned as a construction site day, but the weather was questionable so we all headed over to the Habitat ReStore to put in our hours there. Being early in the morning, the store wasn’t open to the public yet so we got a tour of the main shopping floor. I hadn’t realized how big this place was but it is on the order of 20,000 square feet of display space for all the donated items to be sold. Then we head into the rear of the store where all the donated items come in each day thru a large covered dock. This part of the building is about another 10,000 square feet and is chock full of items. The public can bring items to the store or there are box trucks that can be used to bring in larger donations or deliver larger sold items. Since the store will only sell items that work, the donations go to designated areas around the room for testing or repair. One area has washers and dryers being run to make sure they work and another area for testing small appliances and yet another area for tool testing.
Given how quickly things come in and go out during the course of the day, I would say the best term for how this side of the shop functions is “organized chaos“. That isn’t a criticism given that almost all of the workers back in this area are volunteers, each with different skill sets. So if two bicycles come in but the volunteer that knows how to fix bikes only comes in 2 days a week, these bikes will sit and wait until he can come in and look them over and make repairs and adjustments as needed. Our work leader knew that we were decent at woodworking and general maintenance so we were assigned to the Furniture Repair area. Our team initially needed to get some other pallets of large items out of the way before we could assess the furniture that was here and determine what was needed to be done to make them ready for the showroom floor.
From what we could determine, there might not be a regular volunteer that does furniture repair because there were more than a dozen tables, bookcases, and armoires in various levels of repair. Many of the repairs were fairly minor needing only something glued or some screws or other hardware to assemble them. But even the simplest repairs tended to take some time to complete mainly because we were unfamiliar with what hardware, supplies and tools were available.
For instance, one table simply needed 8 machine screws of unknown diameter and pitch - although I suspect they were metric. I went thru dozens and dozens of little bins searching for screws that would work. After 20 minutes I actually found the correct thread diameter and pitch but they were all 1/2 inch too long. So after finding a vise, hacksaw and file, I was able to get 8 screws that worked. Some of the larger items required even more extensive repairs, that would require a leg to be re-glued and then assembled the following day. Since we were only there for that one morning, we only completed a few items to go to the showroom floor and made some progress on a few others. I hope the next guy that comes in gets the gist of where I was heading with the repair!
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| Our Furniture Repair Area |
The next few days the weather cooperated and we are able to do actual house building. This time we head to the southwest quadrant of Vero Beach where Habitat has about 8 building lots in various stages of completion - from land that is cleared but no foundation exists, to a home nearly ready to be moved into. The lots are not all right next to one another but are all within a couple block radius. These new lots are in an established neighborhood with many of the houses being on the order of 20 years old. Each morning at 7:30, we converge at one of the job sites to get our assignment for the morning. Besides the roughly 8 CAV crew, there is usually another dozen local volunteers that show up. The main construction manager (Richard) gets everyone together and goes over what needs to be completed at each of the job sites. After a group prayer, we all head off to our assigned location. There are also 5 or 6 supervisors that will be scattered around the different lots to make sure we are accomplishing what is needed and bringing the right tools or supplies to get the tasks done.
The CAV team ends up working at the lot on the corner of 11th St SW and 15th Ave SW. We arrive to find a concrete slab with a few utility conduits sticking out of the floor. For the next two mornings, we take direction from Jevon or Juan. Our mission is to get the sill plate installed and the walls constructed because this house is going to be having a “wall raising” ceremony on Saturday morning. Half the team works on the sill plate and the other half works on building the headers for the windows and doors.
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| Our Slab Awaits |
I was part of the header builder team. The task sounded simple enough. Take two 16 foot long 2 x 12’s, add a piece of plywood sandwiched in between to make the header the width of a 2x4 and nail them together. The reality was that the boards had just a little bit of bow or twist so we needed to clamp and muscle them into the proper alignment before nailing and work our way down the board. The 16 penny nails needed to be nailed every foot or so down the length of the boards and then flipped over and repeated from the opposite side. But 16 penny nails are just a smidge too long so they need to be angled to prevent the point from poking out on the other side. The real kicker was we got to do this by hand with just a hammer - no framing nailer for us! I’m pretty sure I have never swung a hammer so many times in one day and my arm could tell by the end of the morning.
With the headers built and sill plates installed we were able to start framing the walls late Thursday morning and come back the next day and complete the walls flat on the slab for the wall raising Saturday morning.
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| Wall Comes Together |
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| Friday's Progress |
There was a very big crowd for the raising. One wall was already up so that the ceremonial wall being raised would have something to be attached to. One of the other traditions that happens on this day is that all the volunteers sign some of the studs wishing the new homeowners well. A group of about a dozen people help the homeowners raise the wall and the construction crew makes sure it is plumb and square.
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| Future Homeowners in Blue |
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| Signing the Studs |
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| Ready, Set, Lift |
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| Ceremonial Photo |
It turns out that the future owners of this home come from the Rochester area. After the ceremony was over, we spent some time talking with them about some of the places back home in western New York. It was definitely special for us to have an added connection with this couple as they start their home ownership dream here in Florida. We continue with the other walls after the ceremony was complete. But we needed to take another break mid morning for yet another Habitat ceremony. This one was a couple blocks away from our site and was a dedication ceremony. There were even more people present to watch the presentation of the keys to the new homeowner and the ribbon cutting.
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| Home Ready for Dedication Ceremony |
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| New Homeowner Cuts the Ribbon |
We got a chance to walk thru the house to see what one looks like well after our stage of the build is complete. By the time we got back to our build site, we only have an hour more of work before our first week is over. Given we only worked 3 of the 5 days at this site, I feel we made some substantial progress.
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| Progress by Quitting Time Saturday |
That Saturday evening for dinner, 11 of the CAV team were able to take advantage of the lounge and its kitchen and prepare a big meal. We got a chance to see some of the crew that has been working at the ReStore or other job sites in the area. It was a fun evening.
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| Some of the CAV Crew |
Sunday was our first full day off so we decided to expand our search radius a bit and head down to Fort Pierce. Admittedly the real reason for picking this as our destination was we would be in another county in Florida that we haven’t found a geocache yet. Plus there was an Adventure Lab in town to tour us around the area. We started out at Old Fort Park. There is a large hill in the park that is a burial mound for the Ais Indian culture from 500 to 1000 years ago. It’s right along the Indian River with some nice views.
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| Old Fort Park |
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| Burial Mound |
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| River View |
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| Herons on the Hunt |
The Adventure Lab takes us thru lots of the downtown area to learn about some of the historic buildings and people that lived here. There are lots of pretty places in town.
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| Colorful |
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| Two Lizards |
One side note about this area and back up in Vero Beach near our campground. There are train tracks that run up and down the east coast of Florida. Besides being used for freight trains, there is a passenger train that runs this between Orlando and Miami called the Brightline. While not quite as fast as bullet trains in Europe or Asia, these trains are fast. Signs at all the road crossing warn people that these trains can exceed 80 MPH. The nonstop route between these two cities is 3.5 hours which is a bit faster than the drive even before accounting for traffic. As we were walking Fort Pierce, one of the trains whizzed by.
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| Brightline Passes By |
Some of our tour led us by some marinas and other sites along the river. The Manatee Education Center was closed but we were able to go up to the observation tower but we didn’t see any manatees just fish and even a dolphin. On the way home we stopped to get one more geocache on this county. The one we picked was in Habour Pointe Park. We had several to choose from but the closest one was up in a tree. As usual, I get to be the monkey and Chris takes the picture from the safety of the ground.
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| School of Fish |
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| Boats at Marina |
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| Manatee Mural |
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| Seven Gables House |
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| Art in the Park |
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| Jack Climbs for the Geocache |
On our other day off, we head up to Sebastian Inlet State Park. This is just a bit further north on highway A1A from Pelican Island NWR. This park has two distinct sections. One one the south side of the inlet and another on the north side. We check out the south side first . There is a nice museum dedicated to fishing as well as the history of this man made inlet between the ocean and the river. There was a lot to see and learn about the area.
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| Looking Across Sebastian Inlet |
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| Fishing Museum |
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| Lures |
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| Large Sawfish Rostrum |
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| Knots |
There is a jetty on either side of the inlet and there were quite a large number of people fishing. We didn’t see any big ones pulled in as we walked by. This side also has the campground. We decided to walk to the western end of the park which allowed us to see some of the campsites. There were plenty there that would have worked for our size of rig. There were more of those colorful lizards all along the rocks of the shoreline. Even though they are invasive, they are rather attractive.
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| Nicker Nuts |
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| North Side Jetty/Pier |
There is really limited hiking in this park. The Hammock Trail starts on the far north end of the park near the marina. It is only about a one mile loop. It was an okay walk but at one point I managed to get some sort of wasp or bee sting me just above the tongue of my shoe on my foot so it wasn’t my favorite hike!
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| Trailhead |
Our weekend off happened to be the date that we switch to daylight saving time. Tuesday rolls around and the idea of showing up at a job site at the new 7:30 AM meant it was still fairly dark. Worst still was we were sent to another house being rehabilitated. The task for us was to get two coats of paint on the body of this house. Turns out the morning dew was still on all walls of the house so we needed to wait for the sun to come up a bit and start to dry them out. The house wasn’t very big and covered in clapboards. Personally I would have edged with a brush and painted the bulk of the claps with a roller, but the 8 of us attacked the house with paint brushes. It actually went fairly quickly and the first coat dried fast enough that we could get the second coat done before the morning was over. At least I didn’t need to swing a hammer today! We also got another chance to bond with the majority of the CAV team at a local Mexican restaurant for taco Tuesday. A fun time but I ate too much.
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| Painting Job #2 |
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| Taco Tuesday Crew |
For the next three days, we were back at our same house that had its wall raising the prior Saturday. There must have been a different crew that worked on this site while we were painting yesterday because there was a fairly amount of the wall sheathing installed on the now completed stud walls. Our job was to finish the wall sheathing and do some of the hurricane strapping that is code for this part of the country.
At one point, I must have looked like I was in need of a job because Juan walks up and asks if I can tackle a project he needed done. Sure, I say, having no idea what I was getting into. It turns out that professional crew that pored the concrete slab hadn’t done a wonderful job of getting it flat and level. So now our stud walls that were a consistent height were not level. Since the roof trusses will sit along the top of this wall, if something isn’t done to fix the problem, the roof will have a wavy look that mirrors the uneven slab. Juan has snapped a level chalk line on both side walls and marked where the roof trusses will sit. My job was to notch out the top of the wall 2x4s to a depth that lines up with the snapped chalk line. In theory, this wasn’t a monumental task. As a rather adept woodworker, I knew how I would have approached the job. But just like the job with building the headers, we don’t have access to very many tools and we don’t have power at this site yet and we no longer had the generator at our disposal even if we had power tools.
Juan grabbed a battery powered oscillating saw and showed me what he wanted to do. I got up on the ladder and started down the top of one side of the wall. It was a very slow, noisy and dusty process. Plus we didn’t have many replacement batteries for this tool so I was only going to get so far. I asked him if there was a chisel around that would allow me to use the saw to cut the edges and chisel out the wood to the proper depth. He left and came back with what was technically a chisel but it was very dull and nicked so it didn’t cut even the soft pine of the 2x4s very well. Fortunately we were at the end of this workday and I knew I have a very sharp chisel back in the motorhome.
We spend the afternoon checking out Goodwin Waterfowl Management Area near the town of Fellsmere. One of our fellow CAV volunteers had mentioned it to us and it sounded like the type of place we enjoy exploring. It did take a little bit of driving around to find the place. This is a water management property with lots of small ponds, canals and roadways. There must have been some sort of construction project going on and there was a constant stream of large dump truck hauling gravel over the dirt roads here. The constant stream of heavy truck had pulverized the road surface into a very fine powdery dust. The last 6 miles to enter the place was like driving in a dust storm.
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| Black Vultures at Goodwin |
At one intersection, it seemed like the trucks were all heading one way so we opted to take the other route. We stopped a few spots along the way to check out birds or gators. We could see an observation tower in the distance and figured out which roads to take to get to it. It is a fairly tall tower so there is a great view of the ponds and wetlands here. We were a little surprised to see a couple of honey bee hives mounted on the side of the tower. The little guys didn’t seem to mind our presence.
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| Snowy Egrets Hiding in Trees |
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| Tall Observation Tower |
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| View from Tower |
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| Busy Bees |
As we continued our drive around, we came upon a few signs stating no vehicles beyond this point. We had neglected to bring our bikes so we were forced to turn back.
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| Heron |
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| One of Many Canals |
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| Gator Lurks |
At one point, we see a white Jeep heading towards us. The roads are wide enough for two way traffic but we each need to pull over a bit to let both cars by. As the car passed, we realized the people in the car were Bob and Janet from our CAV team - the ones that had suggested this place. We end up running into them again back at a main parking area and boat launch. We walk around the parking lot admiring some of the birds that call this place home. It looks like there could be all sorts of mountain biking options on roads that are gated to vehicles if we only had more free time to explore the area.
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| Spoonbill Takes a Bath |
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| Cormorant Calling |
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| Larger Canal |
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| Turkey Vulture |
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| Big Gator |
When we came back the following day, I found I was able to finish up most of the notches now that I had a real woodworking chisel. We even got a chance to see how the team is able to install the trusses without any type of crane or other mechanical assistance. It helps when the house is a single story tall and the roof has a nearly flat top. Six to eight people are able to get the truss to the top of the side walls, line up in my expertly cut notches and then use some long 2x4s to flip the truss up into its final position while the crew nails it in place. Of course they were allowed to used the air nailer to complete this task but I wasn’t going to offer my hammer swinging skills!
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| Carrying the Truss |
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| Heave Ho! |
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| Flipped Up and Nailed Off |
We had made it to our last work day. I’ll admit that my body was starting to adjust to the varied physical labor and even getting up early. This Saturday was yet another wall raising ceremony. In this case it was at one of the job sites we had only driven by but not worked on. This was also a more elaborate ceremony because it was tied in to something the Indian River Habitat was calling their Business Leader Build. So there were lots of managers or presidents of local businesses here to work for the day. It turns out this future homeowner works at the local Publix grocery store and there were probably a dozen of her coworkers that showed up to help with the raising and show their support.
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| Publix Workers with Future Homeowner |
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| Big Crowd Watches the Ceremonies |
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| Part Way Up Photo |
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| Just About Up |
It was exciting to be part of another wall raising, I doubt that having 2 occur in one 2 week work block is very common. It did eat into our work day but when we finally went back to work, our crew was sent to yet another house. This one was a little further along and the goal was to start to get some of the windows installed. This is one job that is a bit more technical than simply nailing studs. We also needed to to some work on the small front porch to prepare it for the trim carpentry to be done. I got roped into helping with that job.
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| Our 2nd and Last Construction Site |
Before we knew it the morning was over and we needed to walk back down to the home where the raising had occurred earlier. A food truck was being brought in and everyone was invited to have lunch. We had the opportunity to speak with lots of other volunteers and Habitat staff.
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| Food Truck Serves the Volunteers |
We don’t have a ton of experience working at various Habitat affiliates but the Indian River Habitat for Humanity is one well run organization. I almost didn’t want to leave because I was really getting into the work. There are several of the CAV couples that are here for 4 weeks or even a few months. Of course I also wanted to go back to the ReStore to see how that furniture repair was going. I think we will need to put this stop on our list for future winters in Florida especially since it is so close to our lot in Titusville.
That last evening all 16 of us got together for a happy hour to say our goodbyes and share some stories. I leave Vero Beach with a few more friends and lots of good experiences.
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| Happy Hour to Say Our Goodbyes |
