Day 109 – 13 miles – 1,471 total

It was raining this morning but we decided to walk anyways. We set a short goal of 10 to 12 miles. There was a bridge up ahead that we could not walk across. Not only is it too dangerous, but it is illegal. We knew that we would need to walk up to the bridge and then drive across the bridge, and start walking at the other side. This is the Potomac River bridge that takes us into Maryland. Our goal for the day was to walk to it and then we would start the next day on the other side.

Our plan was to leave all of our stuff and Domino in the hotel room and drive to the bridge and leave the car there. Then we would get an Uber to our starting point and walk to the car. Only problem with that was we couldn’t find an available Uber or Lyft driver. That’s what we get for taking the backroads. Ugh.

We decided to drive to the start spot and walk to the bridge and figure out what to do about it later. Horrible plan but what do you expect from a couple of guys walking across the country haha.

Anyways, the walk wasn’t bad since we didn’t have to push our carts. It was raining on and off but we had rain jackets on so no big deal. We were definitely worried about how we would get back to our car but something told us that it would work out.

Sure enough, a woman pulled over and asked us if we needed a ride across the bridge. Amazing. Miss Diana had been following my posts on facebook since my last walk and she saw that we needed help and she came out to help us. We hated to be picky about it but we couldn’t accept the ride across the bridge because we still had around 8 miles to it. We have walked every mile up until this point and aren’t going to skip any miles for any reason. Every step matters.

She understood and Stick came up with the plan to drive me back to our car and then we would both drive up to the bridge and leave our car there, then she would bring me back and we could continue walking with our car being there for us when we got to the bridge. It was great idea and Miss Diana was happy to do it.

I hopped in her car and we rode back to our support car. She told me about how her family had been affected by addiction and how her town was affected by it but not doing anything about it. We got to our support car and I followed her to the bridge.

I was in tears thinking about how amazing this was for her to come out and help us. The timing was no coincidence. It just so happens that our late teammate Melanie lived nearby and I like to think she was looking out for us. This was huge.

We dropped my car off and then rode back to where Stick was waiting on us. We talked about planning an event for us to go to their town after our walk is over to try to convince the city officials that they can be doing more to help. She got out to give us some hugs and we said thank you. She helped us so much. We would’ve been in all sorts of a nightmare trying to find a random ride in the rain.

We walked quickly to the car and called it a day. We drove back to the hotel and shook the road off. Then went to walmart, ate, and did a lot of outreach work and planning for our arrival into D.C.

That’s that. More rain walking tomorrow. We are trying to make some more miles to earn multiple days off going into D.C. and to celebrate Stick’s birthday next Monday.