Day 94 – 19 miles – 1,211 total

We drove to the Pinetown Fire Department. It is where we ended our walk before going on a road trip to the event in Philly. Back on the road. We walked through the small town and hit a country road that would take us all the way into Plymouth, the town where we would end today’s walk.

It was a beautiful morning. Farm scenery. Perfect weather. 8 miles into the day, we hit our 1,200 mile mark. This is a big one as we are somewhere around our halfway point. Pretty cool. While we stopped to celebrate our 1,200 miles, we decided to take a break also. We sat down and ate some snacks on the side of the road in some shade from some trees. I decided to call ahead to see if I could find us a place to camp in Plymouth.

I started with the Police Department but they couldn’t give authorization. They passed me on to the mayor. I called him and he was very interested in helping us out. He told me not to worry, that he would come up with something and call us back later. He also told us about how his town was hit hard during the crack epidemic in the 80s and was hit by the meth trend in the early 2000s. He said that the only thing good to come out of all that is that they have the experience under their belt that is helping them with the opioid crisis. I hadn’t heard that before and found it very interesting. I appreciated his knowledge of the crisis and his desire to help us out. We kept walking and expected to hear from him later.

A few miles down the beautiful country road, a woman pulled up and asked if we were Brett and John. She knew about us from her cousin who helped us out a week ago with the big rain storm. She gave us a cash donation and told us a story of how she is affected by this crisis. She asked where we were headed and we told her we were going to end in Plymouth and the Mayor was going to find us a place to camp. She insisted that we go to a hotel instead. She has a family member who works at a hotel in town and told us to go there and she’ll have it set up for us to stay there. She didn’t know the name of the hotel but told us it was behind the Bojangles and we couldn’t miss it. Amazing. She drove off and we sat there stunned for a couple of minutes before we could continue. Stick broke into tears.

I texted the mayor and told him that we had the hotel to go to but right after I sent the text I got a phone call. It was the Town Manager and he was saying that he had a place for us to camp. He would have to pick us up and take us there. While we appreciated the offer, the hotel right in the heart of town was our best option. He laughed when we kept turning down his offer for a ride. He couldn’t believe that we wanted to walk these roads out in the middle of nowhere. Once it finally clicked that we were committed to taking every step he called the local paper and set up an interview for us. The conversation was funny…

“Hey, I have a story for ya. There are two guys walking from Key West to Maine for Drug Awareness. They are on Long Point Rd about 4 miles south of town. Drive out and come take a picture and I’m sure they’ll tell you about what they’re doing. They are pushing 3 wheel scooters and one is younger and the other is a little older. They are nice looking guys. You’ll see em.”

Gotta love small town America. Sure enough, the paper man was out a few minutes later.

He was old school and kept notes with a pen and a pad. We were too fast for him with our experience in interviewing. We told him that we’d send an email later or he could pull stuff off of the website to use. We didn’t want to keep standing in the hot sun while he tried to take notes on paper. He got some pictures and we gave him all the info we could on how to make the story easy on him. Not his usual report to say the least. He was very interested in it though. He has had a loss in his family to fentanyl. Not one day that we have gone without talking to at least one person affected by addiction and/or overdose.

It was getting hot in the peak of the afternoon. We pushed on into town. Traffic was picking up and so was the trash on the side of the road. We came to an intersection and had to turn onto a busy 4 lane highway. There was a center lane though. Used as a turn lane for either side. Zero shoulder for us to walk on so we chose to walk right down the center lane. We paid close attention to everything that was going on and moved cautiously, but steadily.

A woman pulled into the turning lane and there was nowhere for her to turn. We were wondering why she was headed right at us and we began to get a little nervous. She came a little closer and we could see her waving two bottles of water at us. She wanted to help. Bless her. She got out and joined us in the center lane as traffic hummed by. She had seen us walking earlier that day and her grandson was in the car and she wanted to teach him that the right thing to do was be kind and offer to help with something like water when you see travelers. Amazing. What an honor to meet such a wonderful person. We waved and smiled at her grandson who stayed in the car and thanked the woman for her kindness.

We were basically at the hotel after that. We rolled in and the woman knew exactly who we were when we got there. She had the keys ready and told us we were covered. We still didn’t believe it. A Holiday Inn hotel room when we had expected to camp in some random place tonight. Amazing. We settled in and took full advantage. A beautiful day.