Day 201 – 17 miles – 2,474 total

Today was a big day. We would be walking to a spot where we only had one mile left in our entire walk. The film crew for the documentary being made about our walk came to do some filming. They haven’t taken any footage since D.C. I am disappointed that they weren’t there to film the things we saw and the people that we met along the walk. That is the story that I signed up for. Oh well. Hopefully it will still show people the 3 main things: the awareness of the problem, solutions to the problem, and inspire people to take action.

They met us at the place where we would be starting. They decided that they would walk the whole day with us. This made me happy. I tried to make it as easy as possible for them, but we still had to make sure to get our miles in. The first 6 or so miles were pretty easy. Fairly flat and we were all excited about making it into our final town.

It was a beautiful scene. Farmland with rolling hills. The sky was beautiful. Blue with white poofy clouds. Like a really good child’s drawing. The weather was working for us also. A breeze kept the humidity away and the temperature was very tolerable. One thing about walking this far, is you get good at recognizing crops and farm equipment. I like to try to figure everything out and learn the process of farming. I looked ahead and saw a crop that I hadn’t seen in any of my travels yet. About 60 acres of marijuana.

We stopped for a break there so that we could take this moment in. I don’t think either of us had ever seen this many pot plants in person before. There was a sign posted telling us that this was industrial hemp, not recreational marijuana. Apparently, there was no THC in the plants. This was used for clothing and oils for medication. They had dozens of workers going through the fields tending to the plants. I imagine that some of them were there as a measure of security as well. It was definitely interesting. We took our pictures and moved on..

A few miles later, the hills began. We had to get over one last range and it would take a few miles of mostly uphill steps. We stopped for a break at the bottom of the hill so that we could all come together and walk closely to each other as there were lots of curves and safety was something that we needed to pay attention to. The film crew moved ahead to set up for a shot.

Naturally, as soon as they were out of sight, we had people pull over to talk to us. One man pulled up on his riding lawnmower and talked to us. He had a heavy French-Canadian accent and was really nice to us. He had heard about our walk on the news and also through word of mouth as people were all talking about us in the area. After he left, a woman pulled over in her car. Donna from the Chamber of Commerce in town. She had helped us plan a lot of things and we were excited to meet her. We talked about what was going to be happening the next day as we had our grand finale and the high school awareness meeting lined up. We talked to her and then got our stuff and headed for the hills.

We met with the film crew again and they got their shots and rejoined us. We met a town councilman and his wife and talked to them for quite a while. We then headed up to the top of the first big hill where we were met by a line of people waving American flags in the street. They were there to congratulate and welcome us. We all came walking up and shared lots of hugs and smiles with the kind people who came out to do that for us. It was a great experience. I was glad the cameras were there for that. Brittany would have loved the fact that they were waving flags. She would’ve found a silly humor to it.

We separated from the film crew at that point. They hung back to interview some of the people there and then got a ride into town to do other work. We continued our walk. It started to get really good.

We looked over and saw the sign for the town line to Fort Kent. It was quite a moment. We stopped to take it in and take some pictures. It was starting to feel real. We still had a ways to go yet though. We went up another huge hill. When we got to the top, another guy who was out cutting his lawn drove his lawnmower over to say hello. He was cheering for us. He goes, “YOU DID IT!!!!”

We threw our hands up and celebrated! We asked if this was the last hill and he said it was. It was literally all downhill from here! What a great feeling. We were loving it.

The rest of the day was spent being stopped by someone every few minutes as they knew about us and were happy to see that we made into town. One person after the next. It was incredible. We felt like small town celebrities. It was slowing down our pace but that was fine. We wanted it to last anyways.

After meeting family of friends that we had met before, friends, the police chief, the mayor, and many others, we finally made it to the place where we were ending today. Literally one mile from the end. A few people were there to cheer for us. Mona being the main one. We met her back in Portland and she has helped us put everything together to make a difference in Fort Kent.

We called my Dad, who came up to watch us finish, and he met us at the nicest restaurant around and took us out for a celebratory meal. We all ate great and had a good time together. I think we were there for over 2 hours. It was dark when we left and we had to drive 45 minutes to the location where we had a cabin that was donated to us.

We got there, trying to go slow so we didn’t it any moose, and we were all so tired. There were enough beds for all of us to have one and we were so grateful. We zonked out. Great day