Day 18 Fri Manti to Sterling

This morning started in the best possible way.  Several hundred elementary kids lined up along Main Street in front of the Manti Tabernacle. As I approached they started clapping and soon a chant was going up, “Go, Steve, go! Go, Steve, go!” They all gave me high-fives as I walked by.  A few handed me quarters, and two children gave me small American flags, which we now post proudly on our car as we go. It was  a very moving experience for me. One of the girls gave me a donation and whispered conspiratorially, “I’m Darci’s daughter.” Darci is the office manager at the radio station who called Karen Soper, the principal at Manti Elementary, and arranged for the on-street reception. Karen was so accommodating and it was really awesome seeing all those kids lined up, wanting to be a part of what was happening.

As I finished meeting the kids I was told there was a reporter waiting to talk to me.  John Hales sat waiting on a bench in front of a Fred’s Sports Grill, a half block beyond the Tabernacle.  We spent nearly an hour talking about my walk. Pat Sehorn, a hospice nurse at Gunnison Valley Hospital, stopped and interrupted the interview to say, “You’re doing something just awesome. I just love that.”  She added, “At home health, we get kids who need limbs all the time, and they outgrow them.” She said she would see what she could do to find out who we could help. She also left us with a donation.

After leaving Manti, Kara had some work she needed to do, so we dropped water bottles for me along 89 heading to Sterling about every ½ mile and then she dropped me where we had left off and I headed down the road alone. Twenty oz. of water every 15 minutes gets to be a lot of water, but I was grateful to have it.

I passed a farm with a bunch of Alpacas, some nearly pure white . I met up with some kids on the other side of Sterling. They said, "hey that’s Steve, we should walk with him.” They had been in the lineup on Main Street earlier in the day. We talked for a few minutes, but they did not walk far with me.  I stopped for the day at Nine Mile Reservoir, a small body of water with surroundings that might make the Dead Sea look inviting.

Jenny Livingston, one of the people we had met and talked with in front of Utah Heritage Credit Union while I was walking through Ephraim called and invited us to dinner with her family at the Lotsa Motsa Pizza across the street from the Tabernacle. We went straight from walking to dinner. We had a great time. She had her parents, siblings and grandparents there to meet us, and fed us some tasty pizza with Mug root beer. What a great family! Her father gave me several awesome ideas for creating more donations, and then gave us a generous donation himself.

We had raised over $200, met some wonderful people and managed to get a little further down the road. We hear the weather is supposed to turn bad soon, so I am trying to get in some good distance before the rain comes. All in all, it has been a great day!