Friday, April 26, 2013

SATURDAY – APRIL 20, 2013 – DOWNTOWN AUBURN









It turned out good for us to walk through downtown Auburn while the A-Day game was being played and the final day of rolling the trees.  And the rest of the story is it was not planned.  Our biggest concern was walking through downtown with close to 200,000 people present and us with backpacks on.  We didn’t have any problems at all.  Our day of walking started at 9:10 a.m. from the State Forestry office where we ended the rainy day walk on Friday.  Pictures were made there before we started walking.  As we were walking the major discussion was safety with all the traffic coming into town from I-85 onto Hiway 29 (College Street) and there is a picture made after crossing the interstate and walking toward town.  As it turned out we crossed over to the sidewalk and it was no problem keeping the pace.  The worst walking took place later in the day as we were walking out of Auburn on Highway 147 going toward Highway 280.  It was two lane and a large amount of traffic both ways.  A rough 4 miles to walk with no shoulder on the road forcing us to be back and forth off road to rough terrain and back for smooth road.  This type walking generated some blister issues for David.
Pictures along the way that you will see is Welcome to Auburn, me in front of Commons where my daughter Bethany lived during her freshman year.  Then the pictures from around the trees and Toomers Corner.
Right beside Toomers Corner is Avondale Bar and Tap Room, and David’s friend Jonathan West that walked in the rain with us on Friday tends bar there.  Since he was on duty we stopped in for a visit and a pack-off break.  Of course that was a Kodak moment so there is a picture of us.  While in Avondale we met some new friends and visited with them during our break.  We met Seth and Malti Tuttle from Atlanta back in Auburn for the weekend (Malti’s home town.)  They were sharing with us some adventure trips they have coming up and David and I are hoping to get reports from them as well.  A super nice couple and they were gracious enough to have a picture made with us.
We decided at this point to enjoy the fanfare on the street a little more and had lunch at Five Guys.  At this point the A-Day game was being played with approximately 83,000 people in the stadium and at least that many on College Street.  David had already stopped in J&M Bookstore to visit some friends and then during lunch he saw more friends as well.  Pictures from here are included as well.  While having lunch a young lady (Julie Nolen) walked up that David had worked with at the University.  Pictured in here somewhere is David with Julie and friends.
After lunch we proceeded on walking out College Street onto Highway 147.    We saw more friends of David’s from his years living in Auburn.  Also this route carried us in front of  “The Empire”, David’s home in his early years at Auburn.  A picture of David with the new owners of the empire is also included.  The new owners are repairing and renovating, David was appreciative of the restoration but I don’t think he wants to move back to it!!
We finally made it to our destination the end of the days walk logging 15 miles.  Our stopping point was the Cowboy Church on Hiway 280.

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