The Great American Journey

GAP WALK JOURNALS - VII

Monday - September 1, 2008 Day 180 15.4 miles

Total Connecticut miles - 73.7 Walking Days - 90

Washington D.C. miles - 4.6 Cumulative miles 1597.7

Today was short - partly because we needed to pre-drive a
section and had some trouble finding how it should go. But I’ll
start back at the beginning of the day.

The route for the first part of the day was pretty easy. I walked,
and waved, and smiled, and prayed. My phone rang, and
assuming it was Norma I just answered with “Hi.” To my
surprise it was Bonny, my driver for late September and
October. We talked for awhile, then had prayer together over the
phone - what a blessing.

Norma drove off to another point on my route to explore a cemetery while I kept moving. I
soon turned from Hwy 154 onto Jail Hill Road. I would have
loved to find someone who could tell me the history of this
road’s name, but there was no one. Oh, well. I guess I’ll just
have to dream up my own ideas of how it got its name.

Oh, the hill part I could figure out - yes, there was a hill. It really
wasn’t bad though. Soon I was on Beaver Meadow Road, and
continued on that a little longer. I had my map out pretty
continuously matching up the side roads with my map to be sure
I didn’t go astray again.

I made the turns onto Woods Road, then onto Hwy 81, which is
also called Killingworth Road. My next turn was onto Bartman
Road. But here is where Norma didn’t make it today. She
missed Bartman (very easy to miss, believe me) I got to McTigh
Road before she called to say, “I think I made a wrong turn.” I
waited at the corner for her as she did some backtracking. As I
waited I pulled out my emery board and worked on my nails -
hey, I gotta do something while I wait.

When Norma came I watched as she stopped at the corner and
looked at the sign where I was standing. I waved to her, then
couldn’t believe my eyes when she kept going straight. I pulled
out my phone and called her - she didn’t get far, and we both
had a good laugh over the way she looked right through me, or
something.

Back on track I continued walking to Jackson Road, then
County Road, which would take me to Hwy 79 where Norma
was to meet me to do our scouting of the next part. I got in the
van and we drove first to get some lunch. The only thing we
found open within our budget was a Chinese Restaurant. We
took half of our meal back with us after eating what we could. It
was good - but so far every time we’ve had Chinese food it has
been quite different from what we’re used to.

Back to scout the route. This was a section that Russ couldn’t
tell exactly what the road did from Google Earth or Google
Maps, so he had marked it to be pre-driven. Well, our first try
took us to a dead end. Now we decided to go around to Hwy 77
where the road is supposed to come out and see if we could find
out what happens from that end. No success there either.

I figured then that the best thing would be to just take Hwy 79
down to Hwy 80, which will be on our route a little later
anyway. But for today I decided to call it quits, go do some
shopping with a gift card that was given to us, and go back to
our room to make some phone calls - actually one phone call
and several text messages.

What a great talk Joni and I had. We talk pretty regularly, like
once every week or two. I do miss having her on this walk with
me. Sam and I text message almost daily, and I miss having her
on this walk with me also. We really were a great team.

After my shower and eating my leftover lunch I got started on
this journal, and now I’m ready to call Dave, then get to bed.

Oh, looking at the map a little more closely we think Norma
may have found where we went wrong in our scouting today, so
tomorrow we’ll start out by driving what she saw on the map to
see if it actually exists, and if so I will walk it. That would save
some miles.