Day 157 – 11 miles – 2,036 total

We drove out to our starting point and loaded up our carts and starting walking. It was scorching hot and it was not even 8 am yet. We are in a heat bowl. A huge heat wave has been sweeping the nation and it’s miserable up here. Very humid and stagnant hot air. We were sweating on the first mile.

We were hoping that if we pushed hard to a town called Ipswich that we would get a breeze from the nearby marshlands. So we fought through the heat trying to get as many miles in as we could before noon. We followed a road called 1A and it had a sidewalk for most of the day. We had periodic shade from trees and buildings. It was hot but we were managing.

A couple of hours into the day, a woman and her 3 children pulled over and hopped out to greet us properly. They were very nice and friendly and asked what we were up to.

We told them about the walking part of our mission and then the mother asked what our cause was. I told her, “overdose awareness”.

She asked her daughter to tell me about a friend of hers from choir class. She told the story to the three strangers on the side of the road…

Her 7 year old friend was in a car accident and is in a coma. The accident was caused by the mother who was driving while using drugs.

Hearing this 9 or 10 year old girl tell me this story left me and her mother both in roadside tears. I could hardly talk after that but fought through the rest of the time that they visited with us. The younger twin boys were playing with Domino and that lightened the mood for sure.

I thanked the mother for stopping and expressed how serious it is for her to educate her little ones about drugs. I am so glad that she had already started and that this interaction may be useful for her to bring the conversation up for many years to come.

After they drove away I lost it. Full blown man cry on the side of the road. I asked Lindsay and Stick to lead ahead and I stepped behind for a while. It had hit us all but it got to me bad. I did an emotional live video and talked it out.

I was able to continue on after a while and we headed into Ipswich, Massachusetts. We met a councilman as we entered town and he introduced us to a woman who owned an antique store. We could tell that she was involved in the community so we talked to her about how we could help their town and how they could help us.

We were extremely hot, tired and hungry though. We rushed through everything because we were trying to get some food. We did a live video on her Facebook page. I wished we would’ve been able to stay longer and see who we could contact in the community but we needed to push on.

We went to subway to grab a sandwich and while we were eating, the local reporter came to interview us. We did that and then decided to call it a day.

It was noon and we had 11 miles done. The weather appeared to not be letting up at all and we were dying. It wasn’t healthy for us and Domino to be out there any longer today.

We reached out to a friend of Lindsay’s who helped us get back to our support vehicle. We were very grateful that we were saved. The rest of the day had a heat index of over 100 degrees.

We headed back to Pete’s house in Haverhill. We had a 3rd of July cookout and hung out telling stories while drinking beers. We had a great time. Out of all of the people who have walked across America that I have met, I relate to Pete the most.

They talked us into taking the day off tomorrow for the 4th. We are looking forward to relaxing and celebrating freedom with such a great family!