Today started off where we left off yesterday, mile marker 188 on good 'ol Route 380. Archie joined us for our morning walk and got in another mile or so for a total mileage of 1.2 miles for the last two days. After we walked and talked with Archie for a while, he walked back to his car, and we got moving on the last 30 miles to Roswell.
The scenery is finally beginning to match our expectations of The West and we love it. We can see beautiful mountains and rolling hills in our landscape and we can't wait to get a closer look. We got reacquainted with hills today and while it was a little tough it was a welcome change from the flat plains of the last week or so. We passed the time by guessing how far away certain landmarks were. Out here you can see for literally a hundred miles ahead of you, so its a legitimate game guessing if an antenna is 4 or 8 miles away.
About halfway through the day we enjoyed some delicious chicken salad sandwiches Donna packed for us this morning. Its always great to have some real food for lunch, there’s only so many powerbars a man can eat. After our lunch we were stopped by a reporter. He didn't know anything about us; he had just driven past us and decided to see what was going on. As we were being interviewed I noticed one of his notes said "Nueva York". We soon realized that this was going to be published in a spanish paper. This will be our first article in Spanish, so we're all pretty excited about it. We kept moving down the road and eventually made it to Comanche Hill, a steep downhill about 7 miles outside of town. It reminded us all of Winnie Hill back in Oneonta, "A little bit of up hill, and a whole 'lotta downhill". On the subject of Winne Hill, Claire champed it this morning, way to go girl! On the subject of Claire, I think she should grow a moustache.
A few miles after reaching the bottom of the hill we met back up with Archie, as well as another reporter and The Mayor of Roswell. Mayor Owen presented us each with our own Key To The City! This was another first of the trip, but hopefully not the last! We talked with The Mayor and Vanessa for awhile and got back on the road for our last 5 miles.
The end of the run was pretty slow goings as the shoulder disappeared at the bottom of Comanche Hill. This is the first time we've been without a shoulder in a few weeks so we had a pretty hard time getting used to it. Luckily there wasn't too much traffic so we were pretty safe. We eventually made it into the city where we met back up with Archie about .3 miles from his church. Archie joined us for the remainder of the day bringing his grand total to a mile and a half.
After the run we made our way back to Archie's house to clean up and relax for a bit before dinner. We all got cleaned up, watched some Final Four action, and made our way to Martini's Capital Cafe. It was here we met up with our hosts for the next couple of days, Dirk and Whitney Sonive. We'll be staying tonight and tomorrow at The Sonive residence, hanging out with them and their two sons Gage and Mason. We're all really looking forward to this day off, it'll be great to relax and explore a city as unique as Roswell. We've run 134 miles in the last four days, that’s the most we'll run in any four day chunk for the rest of the trip, and probably the rest of our lives.
It’s going to feel so good not to have to run 30+ tomorrow,
<3 Durkin
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