Today was a phenomenal day! We lost a wallet, a phone, a charge pack, and a power cord. Oh, and the TAT also proved to be fabulous once again also. We met many new friends and heard part of their story.
The reason it was a phenomenal day is because we saw once again that the One who gives us our breath also helps us with the life He provides. He loves on us just because He can. His assist today let us know who is traveling with us.
The day began with Jack discovering his phone charge cable was not working and Scott found his battery pack had a broken connector and could not be recharged. We imagined it would be a few days before these items could be replaced since the last 700 miles did not bring us close to any stores which would have those items and we did not want to stray too far off the trail. Within 15 minutes we passed by a Walmart and we were able to purchase what we needed. Nice.
As we were leaving Walmart, Jack stopped at their gas station to refuel. After fueling we drove a couple blocks to the highway and as we were waiting at the intersection for traffic to clear I asked Jack, “Do you have your wallet?” This was a rather unusual question because we had never asked each other about anything we may or may not have as we start traveling. Jacks response? “No I don’t”. We drove back to the fuel station and his wallet was lying on the ground near the pump he had used. God sometimes uses people to do his work and this time He used my voice.
We were finding our way back to the TAT route after encountering a locked gate on our intended route. As we rejoined the TAT we pulled over by a house where someone was in their yard in order to ask them where the nearest gas station was ( yep, guys do ask for directions sometimes ). As Jack was asking about fuel I reached for my phone which is stored in a holster on my hydration pack. The holster was empty. The phone had fallen out somewhere along our 30+ mile detour. The end of the story is this: the phone had fallen out at a location where people were around to find it instead of along the road where it would likely would never be seen again. The very curious thing is where it was found. Earlier in the day I had made a wrong turn off the TAT and I road to the top of a ridge to a picnic area before I realized my mistake. I then simply rolled through the parking lot and went back down the hill. The phone slipped out of the holster at that parking lot at the top of the hill. There are no coincidences.
The phone was found and turned in at the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had been calling my phone for some time and at 4:59, one minute before closing, Deb answered my phone and we arranged for her to put it somewhere we could pick it up.
We nearly lost 4 days of content as that phone is used to publish our trip content and we had created content but had been unable to upload for four days because we had no cell service.