Day 57
Miles today: 7 miles
Miles so far: 1070.6 miles
Campsite: Days Inn Hotel

I was ready to hike the last of the road walk for this trail today. Only 15 miles left! I left around 530am and walked 7miles until Monkey and Snoopi pulled over and asked if I wanted a ride. I said “heck yeah”!  I had been walking along on SR 87, a 55 mph road again. They picked me up and dropped me in Navarre. Thank goodness, as much as i was ready to walk it, I didn’t want to.

Since I ended up in town early in the morning, I decided to have coffee somewhere. Almost got McDonald’s but saw there was a little local coffee shop and opted for that. Boy, did I do the right thing! First and foremost, they had wonderful coffee! Secondly, the owner and workers thought it was cool I was hiking that they offered me the coffee for free. Wow, how cool! They knew I wasn’t homeless and still wanted to offered me something. Cool! I went and sat in their quaint little dining room and the server came back with a menu, despite me refusing breakfast at first. He informed me that I could pick whatever I wanted off the menu and it was on the house. Whoa!! The generosity! They wanted me to take a picture with the whole staff to post on their social media. Neat! I was a sort “celebrity” just for going on a walk. Pretty awesome!

After my overwhelming amount of kindness, I made my way to the hotel. The front desk lady was nice and gave me extra shampoo, conditioner and laundry soap. Not because she thought I was a homeless but because I had given her my whole speech about the trail. That’s great customer service.

We reunited with Snoopi and Monkey and went to a local restaurant. It wasn’t the greatest sport bar but it had leinies Vanilla Porter so I was pretty stoked. Haven’t had a good beer in 2 months!

After dinner, Snoopi, Monkey and I headed to a local ice cream place. I got the “garbage can” ice cream flavor. Vanilla ice cream with tons of different chocolate candy chunks in it. It was delicious!! And I was stuffed. It was nice seeing them again and they had helped us a ton with shuttling passed the nasty road walk. Without their helped, I would of still been walking on a road somewhere in Florida. I can hear myself say “shoot me now”. Everything happened for a reason and I am extremely happy of the outcome.

Tomorrow I head out for my last 2 days on the trail. Still have to walk some concrete walking tomorrow but it will be on a beach by the Gulf of Mexico. I can’t complain about that too much. It will finally be scenic!! Now I am going to bed, with a belly fill with ice cream. Happy trail!