Day 56 – 16 miles – 769 total

I slept great in the hotel bed despite the hotel party going on next door. I have learned to sleep through anything over the years. We woke up and packed up and got ready for the day. We had to drive up to our starting point and we asked the guy inside if we could leave our car there all day. He was cool and we were good to go.

We knew that we had a bike path to start the day off with but we thought that it ended shortly and that we had to walk on an extremely dangerous highway. Luckily, the trail went wayyyy farther than we had thought and we were able to enjoy a couple of hours of walking without worrying about traffic. This trail was beautiful too. It is called the Spanish Moss Trail and it has a bunch of those trees with the spanish moss hanging off them. I call them “Stick Beard Trees” lol.

There were a lot of cyclists on the trail. When we got to a certain point, they had a water/snack station set up for the cyclists. We knew there must be an event for the cyclists. We went to ask what they were up to. It was a group called Adventure Cycling who go on long rides all over the country. This one was from Savannah to Charleston. We told them all about our walk and why we were doing it. They were very intrigued. It was fun. They gave us snacks and water and advice on routes up ahead. We also talked about the cause with them and gave some hope and options to some of them who needed it.

Our trail ended and it was back to the busy highway. Luckily we only had a short stretch before we got to a bridge. The bridge had a really wide shoulder. It was nice. The problems happened on the other side.

There was a shoulder with a width of 0.01 inches and two lanes of high-speed traffic in each direction. There was a center “turn lane” and we decided to walk in that for a while until we saw something better. It was about a half a mile and then there was a sidewalk. We walked on that until it ended and then and then we had to get back in the center median lane. It wasn’t out favorite moment to day the least but it was our best option at the time.

I looked down at my phone to check for anything that I may have missed in my earlier planning and sure enough, there was a road right up ahead that we could take to avoid all that. I showed Stick and he agreed that we should get off of this road and take the alternate route. I am very glad that we did.

This road was one of my favorite roads of the whole walk. A completely unexpected gem. Quiet and beautiful. The weather was perfect at this point in the day. I could hear the sounds of my footsteps and nothing else. It was great. We enjoyed this for the rest of our walking day.

My dad came to pick us up and we hopped in and then went back to our car to drive up to his house in Charleston. We were driving that way and I had to take a quick detour.

Stick’s daughter had contacted me yesterday and told me that she was driving down to surprise him and she was just now arriving into town. I pulled into a parking lot and Stick was wondering what we were doing but I said that we needed to wait for my Dad to get his house ready to buy some time. His daughter and her two children pulled up and surprised the ish out of him. He had no clue. It was amazing to witness.

We decided to split up since we both had family here. Stick went to spend the evening with his family and I went to go with my Dad and his wife Paula. She had made dinner and I was also just looking forward to being there. It’s always fun visiting my Dad’s house.

Stick came back a little later and we made plans to spend time with family together tomorrow. The walk is very important to us but family takes the cake. Especially when family drives 13 hours without expectations to drop in for a surprise visit. A family day is definitely worth getting another day behind. We can make that up anytime. I am looking forward to spending time with his daughter and grandkids. What a damn day!!

Good night.