Southboro (sort of)

On my ninety-ninth day of walking I woke up in my tent, on the lawn of a Dunkin Donuts. At seven fifteen the manager came out to talk to me, telling me through the open door of my tent that I probably couldn't stay much longer. "That's route 1," he said, pointing at the highway nearby, "and it's after seven now so you won't be able to sleep any more." I didn't know exactly what he meant, but I got up anyway, brushed my teeth and went inside to get breakfast and wash up in the bathroom. Afterwards I packed up my tent and my pack and was walking by eight twenty, under cloudy skies.
I got a little turned around after a few miles of walking, in the small city of New London, because the highway joined with the interstate and I had to guess which way to go to follow it to where it would come out. Before I found the route again I climbed up some cool looking cliffs and took a break at the top, and met a man who was living nearby, his sleeping bag stretched out underneath some scrub oak, above and overlooking the town. Neither of us had much to say, but I felt a cordial warmth from him. He mumbled that I should stay nearby, said that the police wouldn't bother me and said that he would get us a bottle for the night, but I said that I had to keep moving.
After asking several other locals for directions, back in town, I got on the pedestrian path over the three quarters of a mile long Gold Star Memorial Bridge, and after weaving a little bit more on the other side of the inlet found my way back onto the highway. After an hour or so of more walking I spotted a restaurant called the 99, one of which I had never seen before, and figured that I had to check it out. The restaurant turned out to be the ninety-ninth 99, and for the ninety-ninth day I had fried shrimp, french fries, and cole slaw.
At six or six thirty, having moved quite a bit more, I crossed a smaller bridge and spied a boardwalk heading off along the water, and decided to follow it for a ways. After two hundred yards or so the boardwalk ended at a small park, and I unloaded my pack and took the rest of the day off. Walking another path along the water, and then climbing over an old railroad bridge, I was about to jump in for a quick swim, but noticed, fortunately, that there were hundreds and hundreds of pale jellyfish drifting along just under the surface. Schools of some sort of small fish darted frantically among them, too, and I sat and watched them until dark.
For the night I stretched my poncho off of the back of the park bench, pounded stakes in the ground to make a decent shelter, and slept well until six thirty, when it started to rain fairly hard. I packed up early, getting soaked, and then followed the boardwalk back out to the road. Just a little ways farther I found a Lighthouse Bakery, and spent the next few hours drinking coffee and watching the weather channel, then called Don and Carol, who had told me the previous day that when it started raining I should have them come and get me.
In such manner I have been staying with the Hamelins for the last three days, sleeping in a bed and eating particularly well. The rain hasn't let up much since I've been here, but it's supposed to break up later today and give way to a nice rest of the week, so I'm getting packed up and later Don and Carol will drive me back to where they picked me up and I'll start walking again just a few miles from the Rhode Island border.