David Tabor’s Route 7 Walk: 180 Miles From Canada to Mass.

Father and son, David and Duane Tabor, share a laugh on their trek along Route 7.

By Courtney Bonoyer

David Tabor went for a walk on Saturday, May 31 and didn’t get back until this past Monday. No, he didn’t go missing; he decided to walk the length of Route 7. He started at the Canadian boarder and walked to the Massachusetts/Connecticut boarder, a total of over 180 miles.

Tabor, who walks every day, said he got tired of walking in the same area and felt it would be nice to see the countryside. He wanted to "see the scenery you can’t see when going faster."

The idea came to Tabor at the end of last summer. He and his wife, Linda, spend winters in Arizona and, before they left, drove the length of Route 7, keeping track of the odometer and where all of the places to stay and eat were. He spent the last month of their time in Arizona walking and training by carrying a backpack filled with roughly 25 pounds of sand. When he got back home, he packed the things he felt he would need, including clothes, a tent, a sleeping bag and a first aid kit and then he was ready to go.

Tabor and his wife drove to the Canadian border to start the trip. Tabor walked and his wife drove, stopping every couple of miles to meet up with him in case he needed anything. Unfortunately, the first day, there was a lot of rain and Tabor got thoroughly soaked. As a result, he ended up getting blisters, but still covered about 35 miles.

Tabor didn’t bring any food with him, but would stop at restaurants, cafes and mini-marts with a food court. As for lodging, he said that "when my wife was with me (which was the first half of the trip) we stayed in hotels, and the first night we stayed with friends and the second with family. When my son was with me (the second half of the trip) we camped out."

On one of those nights, Tabor and his son camped out in Manchester. It was quite late by the time they found a place to pitch their tent and in the morning they awoke to find they had camped out on the lawn in front of a mansion.

One of the issues they had was running out of water and not being close to a place where they could get more, or being hungry as it was getting late, but being a couple hours away from a place to get food. There were also the blisters and muscle cramps and the rainy weather at times.

The good points outweighed the bad though, Tabor said. Not only did the trip get him into great shape, it gave him a chance to spend time with his wife and son and have a lot of memories for them to share.

Tabor says he’s "looking forward to doing it again, and I may walk the Connecticut River Valley from Canada to Massachusetts later this year."

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