Day 25 – 19 miles – 330 total

We were up around 5 am. I headed down to the lobby to get some work done on my laptop and to wait for breakfast, which started at 6. The breakfast was incredible. We ate a lot and then asked if we could leave the car in the parking lot for a few days. I figured we would find a ride later on one way or another. We needed to move freely for a few days.

We packed up about 3 days worth of stuff into our carts and planned on going a few days ahead without the car. I can’t wait to figure out a solution to the car dilemma. Soon.

We stopped at a gas station first thing because Stick wanted his daily dose of chocolate milk. He literally drinks at least a half gallon of chocolate milk a day. My daughter would too if I would let her so I can’t judge. I grabbed some Arizona green tea.

When I came outside, Stick was talking to a woman who lost a nephew to an overdose. We told her about what we were doing and I told her about GRASP. Not far at all after we got started was a guy who passed us on a bicycle and he told us that his God cured him from an illness of an addiction to Oxycontin. Not even 2 blocks into our walk and we’re reaching people who are affected.

We took a smaller road that paralleled U.S. 1 to give us a break from the traffic. It was nice. We went through an old community that has seen better days. There was an abandoned pool hall and music club that looked like it used to be jumping at one point.

We kept walking and I noticed a guy behind us taking pictures and trying to catch up to us. We stopped to talk to him. A very nice man named Ernie who runs a local paper stopped and we told him about our story. He will be putting it in his paper. He also told us a lot of fun things about the area. That club we passed had acts like James Brown and Aretha Franklin pass through back in the Chitlin Circuit days.

This area was known for citrus fruits. Maybe you have heard of Indian River orange juice.. this is it. Indian River county. He said all the old citrus farms have turned to subdivisions and the locals keep getting forced out. The side street we were on was very oppressive but still beautiful. It was easy to look at the buildings and imagine what it was like when people were happy here many years before.

Once we had about 6 miles in we decided to stop at a gas station for a quick break. The store clerk was a total asshole. Even though we both bought something he treated us like bums. I gave him some attitude back which served no good for either of us. I finally let it go and we moved away from his store to sit in the shade and rest. I should’ve just kindly told him what we were doing and that may have cleared things up. Oh well, live and learn….

About 8 miles later we came into the town of Sebastian, which is a lovely town right on the Indian River. We didn’t care about the town though. We were here for one reason only. To meet Steve Fugate.

Steve is a legend among hikers. He has walked across America 9 times and has logged nearly 47,000 miles of hiking in 18 years. I have about 3,600 to put that into perspective.

He carries a sign above his head that says “LOVE LIFE”. Perhaps you have seen him walking before. A very interesting man with an interesting story. He has a book called Love Life Walk. I highly recommend picking it up on amazon.

We sat at Steve’s favorite bar and swapped stories and got advice from him. Stick and I were both on cloud nine. We stayed for at least 2 hours. My personal favorite was talking about walking across the desert with him. That’s a conversation that too many people can’t have and we both appreciated it.

After autographs and photos we continued for another 5 miles. We were in shock that that just happened. Oh, by the way, Steve has lost a daughter to a drug overdose death so he definitely appreciated our cause.

We made it to our destination. A shopping center with a Winn Dixie, A pizza place, a chinese food place, a subway, a dunkin donuts, and a dollar store. Literally everything we could ever need lol. We knew that we’d be able to find a place to camp where no one would see us.

We found a good spot and set up our tents. I left Domino food and water an let her lay down while me and Stick went to Dunkin Donuts for dinner haha. We didn’t stay long as we were tired too. Went back to the tent and I was sound asleep well before 9 pm. Another great day!