April 18

Ruth took us out early this morning and dropped us off at the starting point. Soon we crossed the Blue River and then came to the town of Blue. We saw a sign at one of the convenient stores, "Cheap groceries". That's our place to shop. There are two convenient stores in town, one when you come into town and one when you leave town.

 

On we walked and just before we entered the town of Bokchito, a woman pulled up in front of us and said she had seen us in the "media". She asked us how far we had walked and we said from the Pacific Ocean. After we explained that we had divided the walk up into 4 phases, she wanted to know what phases we were going to walk. We said all of them and she said, "Just the two of you are walking all the way across the United States!" Yep, just the two of us and our great support team, Carol and Ruth.

 

Today walked was highlighted by three bridges. Not necessarily the bridges, but the lack of shoulder on the bridges. Using good timing and scurrying across the bridges, we made it just fine.

 

Just before we reached the town of Bennington, a lady stopped on our side of the road and said, "I told mama that you were the two fellers that we had seen on TV and that I just "had to stop and talk to you". Her left arm had been amputated about 6 inches from the shoulder and after a bit, John asked her how she lost her arm. She said she lost it in an auto accident, but she saved 7 children in the process and that she would do it all over again. There is a bigger story there, but we didn't press her. We met her mama who was in the front seat of the car, said our good-byes and we were off walking again.

 

Ruth picked us up a short time later and took us back for a lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Today we found an Oklahoma motorcycle license plate, a Texas license plate and a nickel. Stay tuned ......