Day 4

Thursday morning finds us anxious to put Pt. Marion in our rear view mirror and get under way to Winchester, VA. We'll cross in to West by gosh Virginia today, or at least Tweety hopes so. She's begging us to get further than the old, run down gas station at the state line. She really, really doesn't want to have to sleep there for the night. We reassure our baby sister that she won't have to so we start adding our walking miles to the two she's contributed.

Vicki adds a couple more and is happy to say her legs are less sore than they had been. Pam clocks two more miles and is hoping to bump that up to three for the weekend. At this point, we're nearing the Dairy Mart on 119.

We're having a serious discussion about where we're going to end up for the night. Maybe I-Hop at the Glenmark Center. Funny how all our stops center around food. Wherever we stop for the night, we know we're going to need Eskimo boots and coats before we leave and start up the mountains. Kandy's all set with her new Christmas boots and already has her Eskimo coat. The chemo makes her very intolerant of cold so we'll have to bundle her up and make sure her feet and hands stay toasty. We don't want her to get hoarse from breathing in the cold, frigid air so she'll have to cover her nose and mouth with a warm scarf, too.

Vicki suggests we find some space suits to wear as we travel in the cold and snow. Maybe we can borrow some from our friends, the Jetsons.

Robin's busy with some electronic gadget she brought along and says maybe she won't walk and we'll have to stay at I-Hop. But, she's just kidding and gets her mile in, too.

I throw my feet in to the trek and give us another mile. That should put us at I-Hop, unless we decide to take our first detour from our charted path and go spend the night with Mommy at Mapleshire. Yes, we'll have to walk around to the Mileground and down Easton Hill in Morgantown but we've all decided staying with Mommy is what we want to do. We know she'll love it and we'll get a charge out of making the aides/staff mind their p's and q's with her.

We have a good time laughing and talking; Mommy's certain she and Daddy raised a bunch of nuts! Then we unroll our sleeping bags and fall asleep. Tomorrow's going to be a rough day. It's cold, snowy and icy. We're going to start climbing up in to the mountains. We need to be rested for what lies ahead as we head to VA.

Together, we'll get there. Eight miles today, Ain't nothin' gonna break our stride.....