Week 44: The First Half

This week I am near Norfolk, Nebraska, less than 50,000 steps from 3.5 million, which is halfway to Miami, so I will take a look back to where I have been. Next week, I will pass the halfway point and  lay out the plan for rest of the trip.

I started on October 1, 2021, so I have been on the road more than ten months and am sneaking up on one year. I started from Cape Flattery, Washington, which is at the far northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula, not as far north as you can go in Washington, but as far as you can get from Miami.

At the end of October, November, and December, I was still in Washington, which is surprisingly large, especially if Cape Flattery is your starting point. I walked 486 miles across Washington, which I could easily do now in less than three months, but my pace was slower back then. It is easy enough to think the weather was to blame, but I did much better in January and February, which are the coldest months. The truth is, at first Arlo did not want to walk with me, which meant I had to leave him with Jackie while she was working, which put more burden on her. Having a dog made it harder for me to walk.

Fortunately, that seems like a long time ago, because Arlo got his mind right, maybe sometime in December, and started acting like a real dog and wanting to walk. Since then, we have picked up the pace.

I walked across 75 miles of Idaho in two weeks and spent the next four month-ends in Montana. After walking along the reasonably well-populated Highway 2 all the way across Washington, I passed through some truly remote areas in Montana, grinding out over 680 miles before cutting through 20 miles of the northeast corner of Wyoming and into South Dakota. My path as determined by Google Maps took me surprisingly far east and not so far south, but from Eastern Montana the path turns more south and more directly toward Miami.

I ended May and June in South Dakota, and July more than halfway across Nebraska. About three quarters of the way across Nebraska I will hit the halfway point for the trip having been in only six states, and having spent more than 90% of the time in only four of them. The second half will cover more states.

Some highlights so far:

• First blog post October 11, 2001, entitled "Jigsaw Puzzles," and this walk still reminds me of a jigsaw puzzle, although I have started and finished one puzzle and started another since October. It's a long walk.
• Arlo starts walking with me. Don't know when  that started, but it has made this work.
• In January, made it out of Washington and hit my first one million steps.
• Visited Lincoln, Montana, former home of the Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
• Found morel mushrooms.
• Eventually made it out of Montana.
• Passed through Colony, Wyoming, and got a t-shirt from Jarrod to commemorate the event.
• Wrote several Game of Thrones posts.
• Visited the area in South Dakota where Jackie and I had our first date in 1992.
• Walked 33,000 steps in one day in Las Vegas, after walking over 19,000 the previous day.

I am looking forward to passing that halfway point, probably Thursday, and moving toward the finish line.