A few decisions have been made about walking.
Last June 7th, minutes after walking across the state line
into Mississippi and finishing my 122 mile walk from Kentucky, I made one determination about walking. …..I
wasn’t finished.
Some people, though interested and even intrigued about my
walk, gave me that look and in some cases voiced it, that I did the ‘wimpy’,
short kind of walk, (since Tennessee is almost 500 miles long), from Memphis to
Bristol. I was OK with that. I had had a whole lot of fun and a great time
meeting people.
So, I have decided that if God is willing to allow me to, I
am now in the planning stages of going ‘East to West’ across Tennessee. What
will that look like? For one, not an ‘all at one time’ kind of walk. That would
be a 6 to 8 week trip. Since I am still a working man, I don’t think my boss
will let me just take a two month vacation all at once.
I truly would love to say someday that I walked all the way
from North Carolina to Arkansas, but that’s not going to happen. Last year, I
spent hours and hours on Google Maps searching out just the right spots to
walk, making sure I had either shoulders or sidewalks. I have checked every
single route out of NC and every one of
them at one or more points, narrows down to one lane, a single 6” wide stripe,
and a sheer drop off, farther down than I want to drop. So since I will still
be pushing a 2’ wide cart, it would not be safe anywhere for the first 20
miles.
That is the same for the 40-50 miles across the Cumberland
Plateau. So I hope to do this in three chunks, hopefully about two weeks at a
time.
So, this coming late summer/early fall of 2020, I hope to
walk from my hometown of Maryville to the Chattanooga area. And sometime after that, I will start close to
I-24 and walk US Hwy 64 all the way to Memphis, and if I can, across the
Mississippi into Arkansas. So, I am walking as much as I can. As much as the
wet weather will allow. (For you West Texas friends of mine, yes since Jan., I
don’t think we have gone 3 days without it raining here in the foothills of the
Smokies.)
And if you are wondering, my trusty and beautiful assistant
has decided to not go along like she did last time. My hopes? To contact churches along the way
and get permission to camp out on their property if their church happens to be
the closest one to where I need a stay for the night. I think that if I pulled
off getting churches to actually find hosts to keep us for the night, that I
can get permission to camp for one night. We will see.
And though I am letting y’all know of this on my old blog, I
plan on doing something different this time. Either a more reliable blog, or
Facebook, I’m not sure yet. But please, if you have any ideas, please comment
about them below.
