Religion on the open road isn’t unusual in America. The Buckhorn truck stop in Columbia County, Pennsylvania has a tiny, trailer-like chapel — High Way Ministries — in the parking lot. Truck Stop Ministries, a Georgia-based nonprofit founded by a trucker-turned-reverend, operates about 65 chapels across the country. According to truckstopministries.org, one chapel meets in a Denny’s off of Route 81 in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and another at a restaurant in Bordentown, New Jersey.

Blackman’s group is the Northwest Jersey Truckstop Outreach, which offers “Christian fellowship and aid.” She thinks her mission is a bit different than some other spiritual stops along the highway.

“I’m not an evangelist,” she said. “I don’t sit here and try to preach.”

It’s the same at Church of the Mountain, she said, which hosts a potluck dinner for AT hikers every Thursday night.

Go find Sherry

Blackman usually comes to the truck stop early on Wednesdays, before the Bible study begins, and she leaves an empty seat beside her for truckers. On this night, the counter was packed with the regulars she’d met over the last decade, including Eurich. Another Bible study regular, Bill Olivier, said he thought he had life figured out for the first 64 years, that he controlled his destiny. He didn’t grow up with a church in the Bronx, and never went as an adult raising a family in nearby Blairstown.

“Everything was perfect and I lost my wife,” he said.

Olivier, now 70, found himself in the back pew of a local church after Theresa died in 2015, but said it felt like learning another language and wasn’t sticking. The pastor there thought Olivier might need something different.

“Do you know about the truck stop?” he asked.

“Yeah, they have trucks. What else do I need to know about the truck stop?” Olivier said.

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