The Great American Journey

GAP WALK JOURNALS - VII

Thursday - September 25, 2008 Day 204 0.0 miles

Total New York miles - 33.2 Walking Days - 94

Washington D.C. miles - 4.6 Cumulative miles 1688.8

Well, folks, pretty soon you are going to see that mileage number start changing again. However, it won’t be nearly as much at a time as it used to be. I’ll be keeping my mileage down to between 10 and 15 miles at a time in order to stretch it out to the October 18 finish date.

We moved to a new base today - in Carney’s Point, NJ. We won’t be walking in New Jersey anymore, and we drove our walk route today in parts of Pennsylvania, but the motel we’re in is just across the border in New Jersey. Bonny is with me, and she drove all the way from her place to our motel - just under 100 miles. She wanted to get used to the car. She just retired in June from driving a school van in her area.

We really had a great time of sharing as we drove. Dave and I have known Bonny for close to 35 years, but haven’t seen each other in about 15 or 20 years. So we had a lot of catching up to do. Also Bonny is so involved in prayer groups that we really have a lot in common.

First we drove to Washington Crossing at the New Jersey/Pennsylvania border where George Washington did his night crossing of the Delaware on Christmas to surprise the British. This, of course, was a real turning point in the battle for our new nation’s freedom from British control.

At the Visitor’s Center we watched a movie about the crossing, and had a chance to see the huge painting of the Crossing. What an awesome sight. It was very moving.

Then we drove on to Philadelphia where we worked our way to the route I’ll be walking in a couple of days, to follow it as far as we could before we needed to get a motel. I think we did about 25 or so miles.

The walking won’t begin until Saturday, assuming the storm being predicted is not too bad. I heard some things on TV this morning in the breakfast room that sounded like we may be in for a good storm the next couple of days. Today was cloudy and windy all day, and the rain started just before we got to the motel.

Tomorrow I won’t be walking because I have two radio interviews by phone. Between them they take up the morning, and early afternoon. Then we’ll spend the rest of the day doing some pre-driving of the route so Bonny will be comfortable with it, and I’ll be teaching her about using the GPS (Lady G). We also have to get her blue tooth set up for her phone.

We prayed this morning for God’s leading us to the right motel, and He did. Again they were so kind in giving us a good deal. I so appreciate it that so many are willing to work with us on a more reasonable price for our circumstances. There is a big dog race in the area this weekend, and the normal price for something like that doubles, but they left it at the lower rate for the full time for us - and it’s a very reasonable rate.

This motel is full of the racing dogs. It’s so funny to see people out walking two or three dogs, and all the dogs here are the same kind because they are the racing dogs. They are different colors, but otherwise they look the same to me.

We got most of our stuff into our room, then went to get a quick dinner, and back to finish unpacking and set up my office area. It’s a great room - very large. Bonny and I rearranged things to fit our needs.

But now I need to call Dave, then get to bed.