Journal entry, 8-22-06 Today Judi and Mary moved their camper to San Bernadino. Ray and Monica Main had invited them to place their camper on their property. They have an RV and they invited me to stay in it for two days. I was very happy to stay there. I was even able to use their swimming pool. I felt like a king for a couple of days. We continued up the mountain. I am only able to walk 5-6 miles a day while going up the mountain. My knees are not getting any better even with the advil. My knees ache a lot and sometimes all I can do is sit down and rub them and try to ease the pain. It seems like the only thing that helps is to keep walking. The aching is worse when I sit down. The way the road curves around going up the mountain, it soon becomes obvious that it would be a very short walk if the road just went straight up the mountain. I walk two miles one direction and it curves back two miles in the direction I just came from. So after walking 4 miles I am practically back in the same spot, just a few hundred feet higher in elevation. At about 5 pm we headed down the mountain back to San Bernadino to Ray and Monica's place. They took me to dinner that night and I had a Chicken wrap and diet coke. I am only eating once a day and that seems to be plenty. I just am not getting hungry anymore. The fast-5 diet is really working great for me. Just after dusk I settled down in Ray and Monica's RV. It is very nice and I am very comfortable in it. Take care all, Gary, "Keep on Walking, one foot in front of the other." Journal entry, 8-23-06 Today I made it to the top of the mountain. I even ran up the mountain about a hundred yards. Once on top of the mountain we went into the Tavern on the rim. We went inside and had a diet coke. We met a nice lady named Kathryn Polston who is a teacher. She is a very warm person and we had a wonderful time talking with her. She invited us to her place to shower or rest if we needed to. Soon we were on our way down the mountain. I met two nice ladies that were controlling traffic. I made it about 1/2 way down the mountain and set the flag for the night. As we were going down the mountain back to our camp we ran into an obese man walking up the mountain. After that we went back to camp. "Keep on walking, one foot in front of the other." Journal entry, 8-24-06 Today we finished walking down the mountain. We moved our camp to David and Ruth Penn's home. Judi and Mary set their camper up and I stayed in a very nice room that they provided. We ended up staying there 6 days and driving back and forth to our start and stop points. Meeting David and Ruth is one of the high lights of my trip. They are such nice folks when I left there, it was like moving away from family. David likes to walk every day by taking at least 10,000 steps. While I was there he had walked much more than that. Each evening Ruth prepared a wonderful meal and we felt so warm and welcome. We attended their church last Sunday and had a very warm welcome. David and Ruth also host a family of 4 from Brazil that were staying with them while we were there. Their story is very touching and I want to write about it and share their story with everyone soon. I will try to add it and their pictures by next week. David walked with me a couple of times that we were there and I found him to be a very caring man. I will not forget David and Ruth or the kindness they shared with us while we were there. As we were leaving Victorville, there was a furniture store in town that had this huge chair outside. We stopped and asked if we could take some pictures in the chair and they said it would be ok. That afternoon we moved the pop-up camper to Barstow. We were invited by the Church of the Nazarine, Pastor Jerry Winder and his wife Nancy, to set up on their parking lot. By the time we got there at around 7 pm they were having services. While Mary and Judi set up their pop-up, I pitched my tent on the parking lot right next to the building, which turned out to be a bad idea. The pavement was so hot, it did not cool off enough to get to sleep in my tent until way past midnight. By the time I finally got to sleep, it was 4 am and time to get up. Take care all, Gary, "Keep on Walking, one foot in front of the other." Journal entry, 8-25-06 Today we got up at 4 am. We drove to the spot where we stopped yesterday. It was very hot, once again around 123 degrees. We walked to the Barstow Marine Corps Base. Dr. Judi and Mary had already arranged for us to walk through the base. Route 66 ran through it and to go around would have taken many more miles. The guards at the gate were expecting us and we had no problem getting through. We had 2 escorts, one in the front of us and one in the rear. Once on the other side, they opened the gate and let us out. They ask us not to take pictures inside the base for security reasons. We thanked them and went our way. By the time we were done walking for the day, I was suffering from PVC's from my heart. I went to the Barstow hospital and got checked out. The Dr. said to stop walking during the extreme hot hours of the day and I should be alright. Dr. Judi had recommended the same thing to me earlier, but I was hard headed. |
