GAP Daily Journal - August 19, 2008
Aug 19th, 2008 by Lyn Hanush
GAP WALK JOURNALS - VI
Tuesday - August 19, 2008 Day 167 21.9 miles
Total New Hampshire miles - 44.0 Walking Days - 82
Total Massachusetts miles - 4.2
Washington D.C. miles - 4.6 Cumulative miles 1438.9
It was a long day today with quite a bit of driving to scout out
the streets we had to take. New Hampshire and what we’ve seen
of Massachusetts so far do not have signs at street corners.
They may have the name of a street at one or two places, but if
you come into the street anyplace but those places you never
know for sure what street you’re on. How do people ever tell
visitors where they live?? We wasted a lot of time trying to
figure out the system.
We finally got it figured out as to what we would do, but now it
was getting late. I really wanted to get into Massachusetts, so we
made a decision. Tell you about it in a bit.
Starting the day we pre-drove the first 7.5 miles to be sure we
would both be on the same page as far as the streets are
concerned. That went fine, and it was a beautiful walk through
historic Danville, NH which was originally named Hawke.
There were so many fascinating things in this section that I kept
stopping to take pictures. It is full of some incredible history.
When we turned onto Hwy 111, I got some nice wide shoulders
and more traffic, but not bad. I walked on this for 2 or 3 miles to
Hwy 121. Then we had to go down a couple of smaller streets,
then onto West Side Drive where we stopped for lunch. We
drove back to a coffee shop that had nice sandwiches, ate, then
headed back to scout the next section. This is when we ran into
trouble. We kept trying different streets, but couldn’t find the
one we were supposed to be on. Finally we decided to just take
the shortest of these routes, which is the one I believe that Russ
meant for us to take - we just couldn’t find a name on some of
the crucial streets.
The decision we came to that I mentioned above was for me to
walk this last segment in reverse in order to save time. It was 9.1
miles, but if we went back to where I had stopped it would be
too late to do it all. By walking it in reverse I would have plenty
of time to do it. So Norma meant me in three different places in
case I needed anything, and I just did a power walk and finished
just after 7 pm.
About half a mile from the finishe a lady walking her two
Scottish Terriers said to me, “I saw you back in Danville this
morning, what are you doing?” So I went across the street to
explain to her. She was delightful, as were Tori and Bonnie, the
two dogs who are sisters. They turned one year old yesterday.
Katie agreed that they don’t have good signage for their streets,
and she has lived here all her life. She also told me that across
the street from where we were standing is Salem, NH, while on
the side we were standing is Atkinson, NH.
Then I walked the last half mile to the end, got in the car and off
we went to Starbucks in Epping, NH on our way back to Dover
and our motel. We walked into Applebee’s at about 8:30 and got
a quick bite to eat, then back to our room to take care of the
nightly chores and get to bed.
Tomorrow we move our base.
