Meeting a Fellow Traveler, Nature Scenes, and Bird Songs

Content Advisory: This blog post is written and designed with children ten years old and younger in mind. Kids, you can go ahead and skip this paragraph and start reading. Adults, make sure you get permission from your child before reading. If you don't have a child, it's okay to get permission from your niece, nephew, 2nd cousin once removed, or that little girl who lives next doors who's always leaving her toys in your driveway (In all seriousness, I encourage all of you to share these blog posts with your children, maybe even read them to your children who are not yet able to read).

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Today I traveled 75 miles from Springbrook, Tennessee to McEwen, Tennessee. 

McEwen is about the same size and has about the same number of Rockville in Indiana—there are about 1,700 people who live here. That sounds like a lot of people, but it's really not. In the city of Nashville, where I am going tomorrow, there are 684,000 people; that's a lot more than 1,700!

Today was pretty easy riding overall. I haven't told you this yet before, but the wind makes a big difference whenever you are riding a bicycle a long distance. If the wind if behind you and pushing your forward, then it's a lot easier to pedal. If the wind is coming straight into your face, then it pushes against you and makes it a lot harder to pedal. When the wind is coming at you from the side, it makes it a little harder to pedal. Today, I think I was going the same direction as the wind, so it was pushing against my back and making it a lot easier to go. So I'm not even really that tired, even though I went 75 miles. Of course, it does help that I got some rest yesterday!

Today I met an interesting person in my travels. About 16 miles into my trip, I saw a man walking the other direction on the road. I stopped to talk to him, because I wanted to make sure he was okay and that he had everything that he needed. The weather was very hot, and it would be very bad for someone to be walking in that heat and get sick from being so thirsty. The man's name was William, and he was headed to Memphis, Tennessee. William was homeless, which means that he doesn't live in a house like most people do. Some people think that people who are homeless got to be that way because they are bad people or because they are not very smart, but that's usually not true. William was a nice fellow, and he knew a lot about how to survive on the road, he told me about how to look out for wild animals that live out in the woods, and he warned me about some mean dogs that were just down the road. Because I had a lot of supplies and he had very little (he was only carrying a little shopping bag with a can of chips and a few other things), I gave him a drink to take with him and few other things to make him comfortable. He told me he didn't want to take anything more from me. I feel like William helped me just as much as I helped him, because he warned me about the dogs and he taught me some things I didn't know about living on the road.

There are a lot of reasons why it's good to be kind and help out those who don't have very much, or who are homeless. One reason is that all kinds of people can end up without a home, whether they're good or bad, old or young. I know if I didn't have a home to go to, or very much to eat or drink, I would want somebody to help me. Another reason is even more important, though, for those of us who are Christians. Jesus, when He was on the earth, often traveled with his friends and had no place to sleep. He said “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). He also told his friends, when they were traveling to preach, “Take nothing for your journey, no staff, nor bag, nor bread, nor money; and do not have two tunics” (Luke 9:3). That means they had nothing, but they trusted God to take care of them. Since Jesus often traveled and had no home, nowhere to sleep, I think He wants us to be especially kind to those who have very little. In fact, sometimes people who don't have very many things can still have more trust in God that people who have a lot, because the people who have very little know that they need to trust in God to take care of them.

I want to show you some neat things I saw today. I saw another house shaped like a big, tall triangle, but the picture I tried to take didn't get saved to my phone. It was a beauty parlor. It was shaped like the house that I posted on day 2 of this trip, but it looked a lot nicer. I'm sorry that the picture didn't save.

Here is a picture of a creek that has some plants growing in it and sticking up out of the water. I think that they might be lily pads, but I'm not sure:

And here is the beautiful Tennessee River. It was pretty far across, but not as wide as the Ohio. The bridge had a big shoulder (shoulder means a clear area on the side of the road) where I could get out of the way of cars and take some pictures. This part of the river has an actual island on it—this is not a sandbar like I talked about in my post on day 1, but it is a real island. All of the trees that you see are actually on the island. It probably floods when the river gets really high, and it looks like some of the trees that were close to the edge of the river might have been in a little bit of water:

Do you see the birds flying around over the water next to the bridge? They were all over the place next to that bridge. I took a video of the birds that I am posting below. I hope that it will play on your computer. You should be able to see them flying and hear them singing:

God willing, I will post to you tomorrow from Nashville, where I am going to visit my uncle!