The Great American Journey

GAP WALK JOURNALS - VI

Tuesday - August 26,  2008    Day 174   21.8 miles

Total Connecticut miles - 21.8     Walking Days - 87

Washington D.C. miles - 4.6   Cumulative miles 1545.8

Today wasn’t nearly as exciting as yesterday, but it was still a
good day. We drove to our start point at the Rhode
Island/Connecticut border. After walking the first 1.4 miles I
came to a road on my route that had a sign saying, “No through
traffic.” Hmmmmm, not a good sign. And you never know if it
is because a bridge is out, or they just don’t want a lot of traffic
going through.

So I called Norma and told her we need to drive a section to see
if I can walk it. In a few minutes she was there, and we drove
down the road to find that indeed a bridge was out and we
couldn’t get through.

Now we had to backtrack to find a way around this. It wasn’t
hard, and within a few minutes we had our new route for that
portion settled. Back to the road where I had turned off so I
could walk around our detour.

Within the next hour I was back on the regular route. One thing
I noticed right away was that Connnecticuns (is that what they
call a person who lives in Connecticut?) are very friendly.
Almost everyone waved to me when I waved to them. Some
saluted (that usually means we are near a military base), and a
few honked. It was great.

My prayers went up for everyone of them, as well as for the
homes I passed by, the businesses, the schools, churches, and
leaders of the communities I passed through. I spent time
praying for my friend who had a biopsy on Monday, and another
lady going to the hospital tomorrow for something serious.  My
prayers also went up for the upcoming elections and our
presidential candidates, for our senators and representatives.

When I’m out there walking there is plenty of time to think, and
that thinking usually turns to praying.  People often ask me if I
get bored while I’m walking. My answer is a very definite “No!”
I enjoy the beauty everyplace I walk - the beauty of the trees and
flowers, the beauty of people of many races and ages, the beauty
of cities, towns, and villages. There’s even a beauty in people in
the poorest parts of our cities.

Well, today’s walking was mostly in the country on roads with
lots of trees (and poison ivy as well), a few dead critters
(including a large snake), and some delightful flowers. Some
roads had a fair amount of traffic, and others had very little.

One place I heard a lot of shooting, and concluded it was people
doing target practice.  I was happy to get past the noise. I also
had lots of hills today, but that doesn’t bother me much
anymore.

Our lunch today was at Hanks Restaurant in Brooklyn, CT (at
least I’m pretty sure that’s the town we were in at that point). I
had a cabbage and sausage soup that was out of this world, and
we both had barbecued beef tips for our main dish. That was
really good.

When Norma and I were driving back on Brooklyn Turnpike (a
small country road, by the way) we saw a couple of turkeys in
the road ahead of us. We paused to let them cross. Then another
emerged from the weeds, and another, and another - seventeen
in all. There were several youngsters among the group of
turkeys, and the adults made sure the young ones got safely
across.

The drive home was long, but fun as we listened to our CD’s
and talked about the day. Back at our room we heated up some
leftovers for our dinner, showered, and headed to bed.