I woke up at 5:30 am again. There was a team of tree cutters getting ready to head out to work. What I noticed when we drove into town was that there wasn’t a lot of water damage here from Katrina but that there were trees down all over. Most yards had at least one tree down but several had trees come down on top of or into their homes. The guys who came to help cut the trees down said they were keeping very busy. When they arrived 2 weeks after the hurricane, many people were living in their home despite the fact that there were now trees in their homes and big openings in their roofs. Power was restored to most homes a couple days before we got there but there were few places to buys food. The fast food restaurants were keeping very busy.

We split into two groups to pick up breakfast in the morning. One went to Hardees and the other went to a doughnut shop. I was with the group that went for doughnuts. Surprisingly, we found a cop eating breakfast there. We chatted with him for a little while. He said he saw us the day before handing out food at the church. I remembered trying to wave down a few cops the day before to try to give them some BBQ but none stopped. He told us that they don’t stop in that part of town unless they have to. That didn’t sound good. We told him that we were headed back there to hand out hot food again today and he gave us a concerned look. He said that he wouldn’t stay there. He also mentioned that he believed that several people who got food from us probably took it back to other people and sold it, he had seen it before with bottled water. We told him that we did get nervous yesterday when people started eyeing our generator. He said he was glad we packed up everything before taking off the night before because it would be gone if we left it there over night. He almost laughed out loud when we told him that we had planned to spend the night there in tents. He advised us to not set up there again especially since the alcohol ban had been lifted that day and there were bars very close to our location the day before. We decided it was a good idea to take his advice and find a new location.

As luck would have it, we found another Baptist church that was willing to let us set up in their parking lot. This one was much better lit and in a slightly nicer part of town. Today, we cooked chilli-mac. For those of you like me who have never had chili-mac, it consists of canned chili mixed in with macaroni noodles. It was really quite tasty but let me tell you it was incredibly messy to prepare. I was covered in chili by later morning. I think we served around 1000 plates of chili-mac on top of the 800 BBQ sandwiches the day before. Not bad. Between unpacking and repacking the trailers and unloading hundreds of cans of soup and chili for the church, I really worked up a sweat. Hopefully, all the work will help me keep off the extra weight from all the southern (aka fried) food I’ve been eating since I got here.

We left town about 5:30 or 6:00. It took us about 6 or so hours to make it back to Fort Walton Beach. I have never been happier to see a shower and bed in my life. I talked to Mike on the phone for all of 5 minutes before falling dead asleep.