Day 1

I was so nervous, but I was able to sleep Thursday night, thank heavens. I got up at 4:15 and hurried to get ready for Kathy to pick me up at 5. We were meeting the other ladies there. I hadn't put on my shoes since my heals started hurting (about a week) and the minute I did, they hurt. Panic immediately set in. But anyone who knows me knows I suffer in silence... so the whole ride there I was praying for a miracle. (after we started walking, I adjusted my shoes and it fixed them. They were sore every morning, then got better. Thank you Heavenly Father!) We arrived at opening ceremonies around 6:20. They were held at Bellevue Community College and the line of cars waiting to turn in was ridiculous. For those of you who know the area, cars were backed up down the hill around the corner to the DQ. After getting through that Kathy's husband dropped us off with our huge bags and off we went to find gear truck "G". As soon as we got our bags taken care of we found the rest of our team and we were so excited.

Here's the Double D's ready to go! From L-R: Tara, Kathy, Sondra, me, Janet. Janet's mom, Doris, passed away 30 years ago to the day from breast cancer. Kathy's friend, Deidre, passed away in April of this year. Hence, the "Double D's".We then made our way over toward the stage and waited for opening ceremonies to begin. It was awesome to look over the sea of people. Over 3200 people walked and combined with the fundraising of the volunteer staff raised over $8 million. SO great!Opening ceremonies was very emotional. They talked about why we're walking, for our mother, friend, daughter, sister, aunt, the future, etc... 8 survivors came into the center circle carrying these flags and with the music playing the tears started flowing! It was such a great feeling to be involved in something so important with SO many other people!

This is us FINALLY getting on our way. We some how ended up in the back of the pack so we waited about 45 minutes to get out of the gate.

Day 1 was hard because we were all bunched up the whole time. On our training walks we would get done with an 18 miler in about 7 hours. On Friday we walked 20.7 and it took us over 12 hours. We were very tired and our feet were very sore. Here are some pics of where we walked, and how crazy crowded it was.

This is basically how we walked the whole first day. Trying not to step on the person in front of you.Pit stop 1. They were pretty much all the same with different themes and people dressed up and stuff. You could get food, drink, and medical if you needed it. Oh, and lets not forget the port-a-potties.We got to cross the street a block before these poor people. They're waiting for a light you can barely see on the left of this picture.We walked around the perimeter of downtown Bellevue, winding our way through streets and ended up at the park across from Belle Square for lunch. We were SO happy to make it to lunch! We could sit down, take off our shoes and EAT more than a granola bar :)

The "3-day stalkers" were our cheerleaders along the way. The helped SO much, got us pumped up again when we were tired and gave us treats and sprayed us with water. My favorites were the little kids holding out treats or stickers. My favorite treat was frozen peppermint patties. LOVED THEM! This was my favorite sign - "No war in my rack"Now we're heading out to Redmond.

The last pit stop was the "Double D Ranch" at Microsoft.

We FINALLY made it to the Marymoor trail! Here we are entering camp (at Marymoor park) on day 1 - HORRAY!!!
Here's where we got our bags and tent. The tents were pretty comfy. We got to camp late, just in time to wait in line for our shower, dinner and go to bed. Tara and I were determined not to be on the tail end behind the slow-pokes on day 2 because we wanted to get back and have time to enjoy camp. Every pit stop we were at we heard "get on the trail or get on the bus!" If you were there after closing time, they shipped you to the next one. We were rush, rush, rush all day but stuck walking SO slow! We kicked into gear on day 2 and it was WAY better!