A Journey of 3000 Miles

  Soooo, in case you were wondering where I'd wandered off to, or if I got lost somewhere between Canada and Key West, I give you proof that I am following doctor's orders and elevating (my leg off the sand on the cooler) and icing my knee for 3 weeks (1 week down, 2 to go!).  I just never promised that I'd do it at home....  Also, it's important to enjoy Connecticut's off-trail delights as well, like Rocky Neck State Park in Niantic. Since I know you'll ask, I have a re-injury to my Quad tendon.  ("POP" is never a sound you want associated with your knee!)  3 weeks "off" my feet, then 3 weeks of PT, and then I can (hopefully) get back to a bit of walking.  I've already mapped out tiny little bite-sized, pitifully slow on-trail walks we can take once I'm on my feet again.  In the meantime, I've got a couple of "rolling" legs planned with The Map Man powering my wheelchair, so stay tuned for that nonsense! In the meantime...

  The girl child and I decided to take advantage of the cool rainy day today to take care of another tricky section of the trail.  This leg starts with the "East Hartford Tooth", a 4-mile On Road segment.  Originally we had planned on walking the sidewalked On Road portions of the trail as well as the dedicated trail, but our experiences in Willimantic showed me that the irregularity of sidewalk surfaces is not beneficial to my knee situation -- the only reason I've done so well to this point with all the walking is because the surfaces have been consistently level.  (The East Coast Greenway is a bike trail, so that makes it an ideal walking surface as well.)  So we drove "The Tooth" instead, and as such, have no photos of that portion, since I can't drive and snap photos at the same time.   Maybe in the future I'll hand the girl child the phone when we're on driving segments. Anyway!  The above photo is where we started our 2.5 mile walk.  W...

  We have some horrifically hot temperatures coming this weekend,  so we wanted to get our walking in while it's still somewhat comfortable.  So, Tuesday, on our way home from another activity, we stopped to walk our last 2 mile piece of the Hop River Trail that the East Coast Greenway uses, connecting everything we've walked so far.   It was a PERFECT day for it!!  And such a relief to be safely ensconced in the woods away from pesky people! The girl child was simply giddy with relief to be walking on safe, secluded trail again, after the trials and tribulations of our downtown Willimantic Leg.  It certainly made for a more enjoyable time on the trail! The tunnel under Route 6. Our turn-around point, Parkers Bridge Road, where we started a walk last week. We celebrated the connection of all 32.5 miles we've walked, from East Hartford to North Windham.  We will spend the summer expanding that in either direction! 32.5 miles walked, 2967.5 miles to...

 Summer-like temperatures this weekend had us waiting until evening yesterday to get our walking in.  The girl child and I took advantage of The Map Man's availability to walk a piece of trail that I was more comfortable traversing with a male companion.  A special hat tip to my twin-brother-from-another-mother, Matt, for the shuttle service to our starting location so we didn't have to walk it in both directions.  This was a 2 mile section of the trail (including a brief On Road section) through the heart of Willimantic, connecting up a couple of other sections we've already walked.  We started at the parking lot of the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum, which was our turn-around point during an out-and-back walk a few weeks ago, and headed east. Everything is suddenly SO green -- there were barely any leaves on the trees at all just a couple weeks ago when we were last here!  We rushed through this portion of the trail, which features not only the Willi...