Daily Journals - July 22, 2008
Jul 23rd, 2008 by Lyn Hanush
GAP WALK JOURNALS - V
Tuesday - July 22, 2008 Day 139 26.3 miles
Total Maine miles - 53.0 Walking Days - 66
Washington D.C. miles - 4.6 Cumulative miles 1056.4
Today was pretty fun, though tiring. Connee and I both started
walking, and Connee stayed with me for three segments. We
started out with a climb, but it wasn’t steep all morning.
At one place we were taking pictures of Eagle Lake when the
people who lived in the house by where we were standing
invited us to walk out on their lawn closer to the lake. We didn’t
want to expend the energy to do so at that time, so we thanked
them, but declined their offer. How nice of them though.
After three segments Connee was having a hard time, so she
rode with Russ the rest of the day. She did 13.1 miles. She has
also developed a blister that is giving her a lot of discomfort.
Ouch.
In the fourth segment I was walking down a hill when a truck
came slowly up the hill. Behind him were three cars. The middle
of these responded to my wave with very excited waves and
hollers and a camera - almost as if they already knew about what
I was doing. When I got to the van I asked Russ and Connee if
they had talked with anyone about the walk. They said they
hadn’t, but that a carload of people had paused to read the signs
on the van as they went by. We figured that had to be them.
We headed into Portage to find a place for lunch, and ended up
at Dean’s Motor Lodge Restaurant. As we sat trying to decide
what we wanted, a man came up to us and said, “Your off the
red line.” We weren’t sure what he meant at first, but finally
figured out that he had been sitting in the car next to us and was
looking at our sign. It only has the line for the walk across the
nation, not for this walk.
Well, we got to talking with Nelson and finally he sat down and
joined us for lunch. He was able to quote a lot of Scripture, and
we enjoyed talking with him. The waitress brought us a piece of
coconut creme pie with a candle in it, and we sang Happy
Birthday to Connee. It was a fun birthday celebration. We had a
delightful lunch, but finally had to get back to walking.
In this next segment I was to walk past a bog where moose hang
out. However there were no moose there at this time. :-( I had a
few good hills in the last two segments - at least one was a 9%
grade. People were waving really good, and one dump truck
driver honked extremely generously - he had obviously seen me
earlier.
During the last segment, Russ and Connee drove off to check
out a dirt road I am supposed to start on Thursday. It is a logging
road, and they got permission from one of the head men for me
to walk through with my support team. We have to make sure
we yield to loggers. But the man in charge was quite excited
about letting us do this. He did however suggest we check with
one more person, and told us where to find him. We’ll do that
tomorrow.
Finally we headed back to Madawaska to eat dinner. Our first
choice was closed already, so we decided on Jeff’s pizza where
we ate last night. This time we got hamburgers, and Connee got
fish and chips.
Then we headed back to our room where we got our chores
done, and headed to bed.
