Brian Murphy

I have been amazed to see how helpful people have been to us along our journey. We have come a long way since Grandfather Mountain, currently in Camden, SC, and already people along the way have given up so much of their time and hospitality. Mr. Kessel in Hickory let us camp in his backyard when there was nowhere for us to sleep. The OP and UREC staffs have been essential to our journey in logistics and transportation. Ronnie at the Catawba Indian Nation was a great help to us letting us stay on their land and teaching us about the culture that they are keeping alive. The least we could do was a service project where we cleaned up a trail that had been wrecked with fallen trees from a storm the previous week. Then there is Katie from the USC OP who went out of her way to drive us and shuttle us around the Great Falls reservoirs, without her we would have been stopped in our tracks with no where to go. Even just yesterday David Keisler, a stranger to us, picked us up while we were walking 2 miles from the river to where we planned to stay in Camden. While walking down the freeway 601, despite all of the people we passed he was the only on to stop and lend us a hand. All of these people and even the ones I haven’t mentioned have had a huge impact on our expedition and have been so helpful. I am so glad that there are still people around that are willing to go out of their way to lend a helping hand when sometimes it feels like none would.