Thank-you to Coulee House Inn and Suites hotel for accommodating our women's team. The manager is a keen marathon runner himself, and his son is looking like he's following in his footsteps, starting with 5k races already at the age of 11.

We started running today outside Coulee City. The weather was perfect with blue skies, high wispy clouds and a light breeze. We ran through rolling farmland of fields of wheat and barley.

In no time we arrived early in Wilbur. There we sampled the coffee at the local café called Espresso. Barb, the lady at the café came outside to hold the torch.

At Wilbur we were due to meet the mayor but unfortunately he could not make it. However, we met Lynn McWhorter from the mayor’s office, joined by the deputy mayor Gerry and his daughter Belinda. They were both keen runners and Gerry had run with the World Harmony Run in the past. It was good to renew old acquaintances.

After the ceremony in Wilbur Amelia and Caroline Stick and their father held the torch. They were very excited and eager to run with the women’s team that was 4 or 5 miles further up the road.

Just east of Wilbur we pulled into a small track to wait for our runner. Samuel Miller was there trimming the grass, and he stopped and came over to talk. It turned out that he used to be a regular runner himself, and in fact he and his son ran with our Peace Run (the predecessor of the World Harmony Run) about 15 years ago. We were happy to meet you, Samuel....Its a small world!

Running into Davenport, Sukhada literally ran into our afternoon ceremony. We passed her in the car and saw her talking to a few people on the corner. Misha got out and ran back to ask if they knew where we could find the City Hall as we were supposed to be meeting with the mayor. "I'm the Mayor!" was the response.

Mayor Karren Carruth was waiting on the corner in the sunshine with councillers Deanna Fitzpatrick and Theresa Telford, administrator Steve Goemmel, and some of their children. Mayor Carruth is a staunch supporter of the World Harmony Run since her first meeting with us 2 years ago. She took lots of photos and said that she would make a slide show to show at their next council meeting.

They very kindly had a cool box of water on ice for us, and a selection of snack bars. We had a mini Harmony Run around the gazebo with the kids. Steve got inspired to do a lap too - running with the torch can be contageous. Thank-you Davenport for your enthusiastic support.

There was quite a coincidence in Spokane. One of the men’s team had forgotten to buy lettuce for the evening meal so they stopped at the local supermarket with our RV. If you’ve seen our RV you cannot miss it as it has emblazoned with the logo and World Harmony Run all over it. A gentleman came up and said. “Did this use to be called the Peace Run?” The gentleman’s name is Bob Cannon and he is the Event Director of the Windermere Marathon in Spokane. He had run with our runners in 1999 when the World Harmony Run was then known as the Peace Run. He was very excited to see us and wanted to run with us in the morning.

Our terrific host Terry (and Don, not in photo)! In Spokane.

Enjoying a fine meal in good company.

– Mark, Kokila, Vladimir, and Jagadhata

Distance: 109 miles

Team Members:
Atulya Berube (San Diego), Jagadhata Amrhien (Chicago), Dmitry Grygoryivskyy (Ukraine), Drsalu Gruenstaeudl (Austria), Jwalanta Voelckner (Germany), Vladimir Salnicov (Moldova), Michaela Pokorna (Czech Republic), Sukhada Korshunova (Russia), Surya Smolennikova (Russia), Kshetragna Ulanova (Russia), Kokila Chamberlain (England), Mark Collinson (England)

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