American Discovery Trail: A New Year

Monongahela Forest

This week, today, ends 2023, and a new year starts tomorrow. This year I resolve not to get hit by a car again - and I am more vigilant than I used to be - and to not go on any long cruises, at least for one year.

My walking has taken me over one million steps now since the Delaware Coast, 445 miles, through Delaware, Washington DC, and Maryland, and almost halfway across West Virginia. December was a good month, with just over 150 miles of trail covered and almost 11,000 steps per day. Also, today I finished the second West Virginia segment of the trail and started the third of the four segments in the state.

Weather up to now this winter has made the job easier, as I remember that the last couple of years, snow and freezing weather made it harder to walk in December. This year, temperatures have typically been in the forties and even fifties almost every day, which is just balmy for this part of the country in the middle of winter. I do not know if it is global warming, an El Niño year, or something else, but walking weather has been great.

Next year, the plan is to make my way through the rest of West Virginia, then Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa, then into Nebraska. There is a very quick side trip to Kentucky in there as well.

This covered bridge, just a few miles off the trail in Philippi, is the oldest in West Virginia (built in 1852), and also the longest.

This section of the trail ends at Tygart Lake State Park, near Nestorville, WV.

American Discovery Trail: Almost Heaven...

 

I am in the middle of the seventh segment of this trip and the second in West Virginia, and I decided to switch to posting once a week if I can, because I like that better than waiting two weeks or more to post. There is usually something to write about in a given week, and if not, I can scribble down a few words about nothing.

This segment has the moderately-exciting-at-best name of "Streby to Nestorville," and the trail zigzags its way between the two towns: Google Maps says I can walk the distance in 51.2 miles, but the trail segment is 69.7 miles long. There will be a lot of that, all the way to California.

The main trail website lists the first place on this segment as Sherr, West Virginia, but a look at Google Maps shows that Sherr is clearly several miles behind me, so I am not going back there. The site does say that if you want accurate maps, you can get them at a website, so we cannot put too much stock in the main trail description pages. Instead, we will press on in a forward direction to the Allegheny Front, pictured here with a guy sitting on a stump, apparently watching for hawks. The trail through the Allegheny Front reaches up to 4,000 feet elevation, the highest area of the trail east of the Rockies.

Dolly Sods Wilderness, in the Allegheny Mountains

The Allegheny Mountains, which reach up to 4,863 feet

Blackwater Falls State Park, less than halfway to Nestorville, but about as far as I have walked, so we can stop there.

I am a little surprised to find that, six months after I started, I am not very close to 10% of the way along. However, by the end of next year I expect to be in Iowa, and possibly even Nebraska, so progress will come in time. For now, I expect to get new walking shoes tomorrow, and I will start wearing out another couple of pairs.

American Discovery Trail, Segment 6: Maryland to Streby, West Virginia

I have finished the sixth segment of 68 total on the trail, leaving Maryland and walking 60 miles into West Virginia, a place I have never been, at least since I can remember. I have walked a total of 380 miles on this trip, not bad at all, but still just getting going. By the time I finish the next segment, I will have a million steps in. These little milestones do not seem like the big deal they seemed when I started walking two years ago, but still, a million steps is worth taking notice.

One thing I am happy to see: Jackie wisely did some research back when I started my trip from Washington to Miami and helped me get two pairs of good walking shoes, which I have worn now for almost 3,900 miles, and I have worn holes in both pairs. I will need new ones for Christmas. That's a bit of an accomplishment right there.

The first place I walked through in West Virginia, according to the trail description, is called Green Spring, WV, another census-designated place, population 218. After searching for images of Green Spring, I posted this image, which is actually Switzerland, because it's a pretty picture. Perhaps I will do this in the future when I get to a place with no outstanding features. Something from Africa next time...
 

Fort Ashby, which was built to help fight the local Indians.

Birthplace of Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln's mother, near Antioch, WV. The Internet says Nancy Hanks is distantly related to Tom Hanks as well as to George Clooney.

Potomac Highlands, part of the central Appalachian Mountains. The trail write-up says that the Potomac Highlands contains some of the oldest mountains and oldest hardwood forests in the world. It looks pretty.

American Discovery Trail, Segment 5: Finally, on to West Virginia

This picture, I believe, is of the private toll bridge across the Potomac between Oldtown, Maryland and West Virginia. The end of the fifth segment of the trail, and the last stop in Maryland, Oldtown is a census-designated place, and judging from the images available, it is not a big place. This bridge appears to be Oldtown's foremost claim to fame.

 The segment, 167 miles across the western part of Maryland, has taken several months to complete. I walked part of August, then went on vacation for more than three weeks, walked a couple of weeks in September, went on vacation again until Thanksgiving, lost my phone on vacation, took a few days to get a phone, then took a couple of days to load a walking app. I finally made it through the 167 miles on December 5, more than four months after I started.

West Virginia is not the biggest state - tenth smallest in fact - but by this trail it is 290 miles across, split into four segments. I expect to complete each portion in about two weeks, so that should get me to Ohio by early February.

As of today, I am 320 miles along. We have no vacations in the works, so the plan is to walk 150 miles per month, more or less - usually more - for the foreseeable future. Already, the map shows that I have separated myself from the Atlantic Ocean by a respectable distance, and every 150 miles is far enough to observe some clear progress.

Segment 5: Back on the Trail

 

Today, I started walking again.

The last day that I counted steps was September 21. Starting September 22, I went on vacation to Australia for two months, and I did not want to count steps while I was on my cruises. Then I dropped my phone in the South Pacific Ocean at American Samoa, so I did not have a way to measure my steps anyway. I got back to Washington on Thanksgiving Day, but then I did not get a new phone until Tuesday and did not load an app to count steps until late yesterday, so today was my first day back on my walking routine.

In addition to not counting my steps, I really did not walk a lot while I was cruising, so I was a bit concerned that it might be difficult to jump right into taking 10,000 steps right away. However, I walked this morning with Joel, which means going up and down some big hills, and I logged over 15,700 steps today (more than 7 miles), so I am still in good enough shape to pick up where I left off.

Today I am just over 300 miles from where I started in Delaware back on the first of July, so one sixteenth of the way to Drake's Bay, almost. I am also close to the Paw Paw Tunnel along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in Maryland. The tunnel opened in 1850 and is six tenths of a mile long, cutting six miles off of the previous length of the canal. I have another 13 miles to go to finish this segment and the state of Maryland - three days more. Then it's on to West Virginia.

Paw Paw Tunnel interior

A New Travel Blog

 

Today, we start our Australia vacation. We should have Internet access on the ships, and I hope to blog as we go, but on a new blog site that is just for travel posts.

The new site is called Stambaugh Grand Adventures, located at www.djstambaugh.blogspot.com.

No time for a post tonight, as we will take a train to Vancouver, BC, and arrive late. Tomorrow, we board the ship at noon, and we hope to have a post as early as tomorrow evening.

Walking (Past) The Appalachian Trail

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, is on the other side of the Potomac River from the path where I am walking, but it is a significant landmark, and I have passed it by now, about 50 miles back. At Harpers Ferry, the Shenandoah River runs into the Potomac, and the American Discovery Trail crosses the much-more-famous Appalachian Trail.

Last time I posted about walking, on August 13, I was on the fourth leg of the Maryland/DC portion of the ADT, a 167-mile segment from DC along the Potomac River to the western panhandle of Maryland. I am still walking on that segment with 35 miles to go, so about 7 days of walking, but I only have two days left until my next vacation starts on Friday, so I expect to finish the segment and step into West Virginia within a week after we arrive back home on Thanksgiving Day.

Meanwhile, I hope to post about my trip to Australia on a new blog, called Stambaugh Grand Adventures, at djstambaugh.blogspot.com.
 

Day 15: Atoka, Oklahoma

I did not take too many pictures of Arkansas, just this Children of The Corn picture near the St. Francis Sunken Lands in eastern Arkansas near Memphis, Tennessee. The Sunken Lands represent another intersection with my walk to Miami, as we drove across the same bridge across them that I walked across on my virtual walk. The lands are in fact sunken, maybe only 10 feet or so, but enough that the area is a wetland covered in trees, and a protected Wildlife Management Area. The area sank in huge earthquakes that hit this area in 1811 and 1812, and we drove on little dirt roads through corn fields to get to them. A bit of an adventure.

From Arkansas, we drove to Atoka, Oklahoma, which makes thirteen states so far. We are staying for a week, and this is the end of the sightseeing portion of our vacation. Here we are visiting family, and then we will drive home by the fastest route available, as we have been on the roads between Oklahoma and home enough times that there are not many sights we have not already seen.

Day 12: The Natchez Trace Parkway

 

For the last two days, our vacation intersected with my virtual walk from Washington to Miami, as we drove along the Natchez Trace all the way from the southern end at Natchez, Mississippi to the northern end near Nashville, Tennessee.

My walk to Miami took me through Tupelo, Mississippi, and when I looked at things to do around Tupelo, I learned that the Natchez Trace went through the city. The Trace is a very old trail that went from the Mississippi River at Natchez to the Cumberland River at Nashville and was an important transportation route in the very early 1800s, although it was used by Native Americans long before that.

The National Parks Service maintains a road along the old Trace route, called the Natchez Trace Parkway, and I decided during my walk to Miami that it might be interesting to drive along the parkway if I ever visited this area. When we decided to take a driving vacation to New Orleans, it was an opportunity to work the parkway into our trip.

We took most of two days to drive along the Trace - yesterday and today - and stayed last night in Tupelo, more because it was halfway than because I had walked through it. The surprising thing about the parkway is that it is very separate from the world around it. Almost no one lives along it, there are no stores or gas stations, no crosswalks and very few crossing streets, no shoulders, no passing lanes. There are numerous turn-offs for historical signs, trails, overlooks, picnic areas, etc., but very little connection to the outside world. The road is well-maintained, with wide grass areas on both sides cleared of trees, and the speed limit is 50 miles per hour for almost the entire trip. The whole 444 miles looks a lot like the picture above. Traffic was light, and it was a really pleasant drive.

We stopped at most of the historical markers, which mostly fell into two categories: the location of a stand, which was an old term for an inn and store for travelers; or a site related to one of the local native tribes, usually with information about how the Indians lost some of their lands before they were forced off all of them and relocated to Oklahoma. We did not stop at many of the walking trails, because temperatures were in the 90s most of the time.

In fact, my walking has been awful for the entire trip, under 2,000 steps about half of the days. I made a good decision to not worry about it during vacation.

Some highlights of the Natchez Trace Parkway included some very cool Indian mound sites, the site where Meriwether Lewis (of the Lewis and Clark expedition) died and a memorial erected there, and crossing the Tennessee River, where Natchez Trace travelers had to be ferried across, although we got to go across on a bridge. The river just looks huge there.

Before we left Tupelo this morning, we visited the birthplace of Elvis Presley, and also visited the same statue of Elvis that I posted in my blog the week I walked through Tupelo, in a park where Elvis returned to Tupelo in 1956 to give a concert after he became famous.

At the end of the Trace, we turned west, so we are on our way back home now, about halfway through the trip. We only have a couple more days of sightseeing, then a week in Oklahoma and a few long days driving back home.

Meriwether Lewis memorial

Signs say there are nine mounds over a large area

Day 10: New Orleans, Baby

Food, sightseeing, the Mississippi River, art, food, voodoo, food, Bourbon Street, music, and drinks. It was a fun day.

Here, women call you baby, as in "Here you go, baby," or "Get you some napkins over there, baby," the way some waitresses in other places still might say "hon." It's kind of cute.

Republicans used to chant "drill, baby, drill" for no good reason at political rallies, and I once saw Rachel Maddow say that the reason they started saying that was that Michael Steele, who was then head of the Republican National Committee, liked to say "baby" a lot. So that makes me wonder if Michael Steele is from around here, although I don't care enough to look it up. Still, "drill, baby, drill" and New Orleans are linked in my mind from now on.

We started with breakfast in the hotel, which included boudin cakes for me, because I never had those before. Turns out they are sausage and rice and made for a good breakfast.

Next, we walked over to Jackson Square, which is named after Andrew Jackson, and has a statue of him in the middle of the square. From there I walked a couple of blocks to the edge of the Mississippi River, then Jackie and I bought a picture from a woman selling her art in the square.

Next, we walked to Johnny's Po' Boys (get you some napkins over there, baby) for a shrimp po' boy, a big sandwich that even I couldn't finish in one sitting. I didn't tell Jackie about the mouse I saw run across the floor at Johnny's until we were several blocks away. Good sandwich though.

We spent most of the afternoon in our room, resting and avoiding the heat, which was in the high nineties, with humidity.

Next, we visited a voodoo store. Voodoo is a big deal in New Orleans, along with vampires, and it seemed like a good opportunity for some souvenirs. Then one more New Orleans meal, fried catfish, oysters, and shrimp. Tomorrow morning, Jackie wants beignets for breakfast, and that will round out our local food experience.

We ended the day by walking down part of Bourbon Street, which was crowded tonight and got busier as it got later. They close it off from traffic so that it is a pedestrian area at night. Then we stopped in the bar attached to our hotel and listened to music while we had drinks. All in all, it was the kind of day we wanted.

New Orleans is an old town, with its own architecture, narrow streets, and small shops, reminiscent of some European cities. Tomorrow we leave, but this has been a good stop.

Day 9: Driving to New Orleans

Yesterday was a quiet day. We wanted to meet Sharon and Joe, Jackie's aunt and uncle, who live near Houston, but they had other things scheduled, so we drove on past Houston to Beaumont, TX and did not stop anywhere.

Today we drove from Beaumont to our hotel in New Orleans, and we took some backroads that went close to the Gulf of Mexico rather than taking Interstate 10, driving through some low-lying and sparsely-populated bayou lands with houses and businesses on stilts, raised up so storm waters can flow underneath. Mostly it is flat and green as far as you can see, barely above sea level.

At one canal we crossed, they had a car ferry instead of a bridge, a complete surprise until we were almost upon it. It turned out that we were lucky with the timing, so we waited only ten minutes or so, and the ride across was probably less than five minutes. While we were waiting to go across, we noticed maybe half a dozen dolphins in the canal, coming up for air and then diving back down over and over.

First in line. The other side is in the distance.

There were big white birds along the gulf, which the Internet says are white herons or snowy egrets - not sure if those are the same thing. Whatever they are, in one area they were perched in numbers in every tree and around bodies of water, looking like a National Geographic picture. My pictures of them look blurry, but Jackie took some pictures with her good camera, so maybe I will post one of those someday.

Now we are in New Orleans, taking an evening break and avoiding the 99-degree heat before we head out to look for dinner. Our hotel is close to Bourbon Street and Jackson Square, and we are staying two nights in one place for the first time, so tonight and tomorrow we will see the sights, taste the food, and maybe listen to some music.

Day 7: Roadrunner and Riverwalk

 

Today we drove from Carlsbad, New Mexico, to San Antonio, Texas. We did not have anything planned in between, but we had to go to Fort Stockton, Texas, and when I found out that there is a big roadrunner statue there (like the bird more than like the cartoon character), we had to stop and take a picture. Oddball roadside attractions are fun.

We got into San Antonio around 6:00 (only because we hit another time change and are now on Central Time) with a motel near the famed Riverwalk (also near another landmark you may have heard of, called The Alamo.) It was 98 degrees even after 6:00, so Jackie did not want to go for a walk, but I did, checking out the Riverwalk near our motel.

I have been in other places with something they called a riverwalk, which consisted of a concrete trail next to a river, but this one is different. San Antonio has spent millions of dollars on the area next to the San Antonio River, with big walkways on both sides, fancy walls all around, and plenty of bridges to walk across. And that is just in the small area where I walked. The whole Riverwalk is very extensive, covering probably several miles of river. The big payoff for the city is that there are businesses all along the way, so you can stay in a hotel, shop, eat, visit a museum, and more along the river. Even on Monday in 98-degree heat, there were plenty of people out walking, and. no doubt, spending money.

Jacke and I will give it another look in the morning.

Day 6: Carlsbad Caverns

 

We visited Carlsbad Caverns today, one of the biggest attractions we had planned for the trip. The visit consisted of taking an elevator down 800 feet below ground level, then walking on a path from one end of the "Big Room" to the other and back. And it really is a big room; I stopped and took several pictures, but the walk around the room took more than an hour and racked up 6,000 steps. It is definitely worth a visit, but be prepared to walk. Jackie walked halfway and took the shortcut back, but even that is a good hike.

Total cost, by the way, was $2 to reserve two spots - they only let so many people in every day. My senior National Parks pass covered the rest.

The other highlight was Roswell, New Mexico. I knew that Roswell was known for alien visits, but I was not expecting to see alien portrayals all over town. Half the businesses in Roswell have pictures of aliens on their storefronts. One thing I noticed: all the aliens depicted are bright green, with black eyes and no hair. Since aliens could look like anything, but everyone has the same idea of them, you have to think that the residents of Roswell have either met these guys or had similar visions of them; it can't be coincidence that everyone's picture of them looks the same.

For the first time on the trip, we ate at a real restaurant for dinner - Mexican food, and it was a treat.

Tomorrow, into Texas (our seventh state) and on to San Antonio.

Day 5: Standin' on a Corner with Australian Bikers

We passed a billboard today - looked professionally done, not hand-painted or anything - that said:

America Needs JESUS, Now More Then Ever.

[sic]

My blog software really wants to correct that sentence.

Today Jackie was tired, and we got off to a slow start, so we did not make many stops. However, we paid $52 to see a meteor crater, made about 50,000 years ago according to the brochure. It's very impressive, 500 feet deep and almost a mile wide. I knew before we got there that it would not be worth the price of admission due to the cheesy tourist-trap signage as we approached, but I wanted to see it, and actually it was pretty cool. Still, $27, or $25 for a senior, is clearly excessive. It's one of those things where they have guided "tours" (more of a talk - you don't get to explore the crater), have built a big building and theater and an immersive experience for kids, and your money pays for all that plus a profit margin, when really you just want to see the hole in the ground.

We also stopped in Winslow, Arizo

na, to stand on a corner and take a picture of me with what I assume is an Eagle. The corner is on Route 66, so in addition to a substantial tribute to the Eagles - much more than that statue - there is a big Route 66 sign in the middle of the intersection.

There was a large contingent of bikers there, and we spoke to a couple of them, one from New Zealand and one from Australia. They were on a guided tour of the US, and part of their trip goes along Route 66. Jackie said she thought they had come from Milwaukee, and they were going to end the tour in Los Angeles, weather permitting.

From Winslow we drove straight to Albuquerque, and from here we hope to get to Carlsbad Caverns tomorrow.

Day 4: Night of the Bugs

When we checked into our motel yesterday, there was a bug (cricket, cockroach?) on the wall in our room. I killed it. Then, when we went to bed, one started making noise - sounded like a cricket - and I got up and killed two more, but the noise continued, and we finally went to sleep. At one o'clock AM, I got up and killed two more, including the one that was making the racket. In the morning, after I showered, I found another on the bed (!). Did not tell Jackie about that one until hours later, when we were on the road. I took the bodies of six bugs up to the front desk, but the guy did not care, said it happens in August. Super 8 will hear about this. $100 a night is not a lot for a room these days, but it's too much for one that is infested with bugs.

Our first stop was Death Valley. We parked at an overlook next to a canyon nicknamed Star Wars Canyon, because they train military jet pilots there to fly through the canyon at high speeds and low altitude. That sounded pretty cool, and then we saw a couple of jets going out for a flight, and they flew low and out of our sight. So we waited for maybe 10 minutes, hoping they were going to fly right past us, but I guess they had other plans, so no luck.

When we got to the main part of the park, the ranger warned us to get out of the area before the rains come. They are expecting two inches of rain - a year's worth for Death Valley - in the next two days, and that will mean epic flooding. The place is a built a bit like a bowl, with Death Valley at the bottom of the bowl, and all that water is going to flow towards the valley.

We visited Furnace Creek in Death Valley, the hottest place on earth, and Badwater, the lowest place in North America at negative 282 feet, and drove on a loop called Artist's Drive. You can see that the temperature, according to the car, reached 115, but actually it got up to 120 for a few minutes. I got out of the car at Badwater and walked a short way; that kind of heat feels like standing next to a big fire, so we didn't spend much time outside the car.

As we approached Kingman, Arizona, we ran into thunderstorms with lots of lightning, torrential rains, and very high winds. Our phones lit up with flash flood warnings a couple of times. The storms were still going as we sat in our room last night, but this morning the rain has stopped, and weather for Albuquerque shows clear and only 95 degrees, so all is well.

Day 3: Susanville to Bishop

 

Today we drove on Highway 395 almost all day, along the east side of California and through part of Nevada, skirting around the Lake Tahoe area and through Reno and Carson City. We did not stop in either city, but we drove through downtown Reno just enough to get a picture of the sign posted here. No gambling today, but we have another opportunity tomorrow when we go through Las Vegas.

The drive today was very pretty, as we drove over some high passes - the highest I saw was over 8,500 feet - and next to the Sierra Nevada on our right side all day. The highest mountain we saw was called Mount Tom, at 13,658 feet tall.

With the mountains on our right, on the left were valleys and lakes, and we stopped at Mono Lake to eat lunch. I can remember when there were big discussions about diverting too much water from the lake so that Mono Lake was going to dry up, but today it looked high enough.

Tonight we are staying in Bishop, California, rather than Lone Pine, as I had planned, because we were able to get a motel here in Bishop for under $100 (plus tax), whereas in Lone Pine we were looking at $230(!). It's good to be able to improvise as needed, although tomorrow's trip will be a little longer now.

Day 2: Bend to Susanville

 

Today we drove from Central Oregon to Northeastern California, through small towns on highways with very little traffic. From here, you would never guess that California is the most populous state in the US.

The smoke caught up with us during the night, but we outran it as we approached California, at least for now. The drive was not the most picturesque, especially at first, because we could not see much through the smoke, and great portions of Oregon and some of Northeastern California are covered in miles and miles and more miles of sagebrush, as far as the eye can see. In a few places they have half-mile-long irrigation rigs and have flattened out the land for agriculture, but those areas are the exceptions. Sagebrush is the norm.

We drove past Albert Lake, still in Oregon, interesting because parts of it were almost dry, and we saw maybe 1,000 birds gathered on a dry bank. Then we had lunch on a bench next to Goose Lake at the Oregon-California border. On Google Maps, Goose Lake looks much bigger than Albert Lake, but Goose Lake does not appear to contain any water at all. It is just a really large, flat lakebed with grass growing in it and cattle grazing all along it. Apparently, it is a common occurrence that some of the lakes here go dry, especially in times of drought, although this is not a drought year. 

Motels serve some sort of breakfast, and we stopped at Safeway and got enough food for lunch and dinner, and that may be the way forward. The big expense is the motels, which run more than $120 with tax.

It is 95 degrees here in Susanville, and it will get hotter as we drive south along the east side of the mountains, approaching Death Valley, but the hotels are comfortable, and the car is holding up well so far.

Vacation Summer 2023: Cross Country

Sahalie Falls - photo by Jackie

 The plan is to drive to New Orleans and Nashville over 12 days or so. Driving is only five to seven hours each day, so we have some time to see some sights and still get in early.

Today we stopped near home to get some berries, then drove to Bend, Oregon via Salem, taking us on a scenic drive through the mountains and Sisters, Oregon, a Western-themed town in the mountains near Bend. We decided not to stop in Sisters today, but Jackie wants to come back and stay the night there.

The theme of the day was smoke, which kept getting thicker as we got closer to Bend, and smelled like a nearby campfire when we stopped and got out of the car. We were starting to worry about whether our route today or tomorrow would be blocked by fires, but then in the last few miles the air cleared. Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

We did not plan to visit Sahalie Falls, in fact never heard of it until this morning when it popped up on Google Maps, but it was only 10 miles out of our way, and we have plenty of time. The falls is not very high - I think I could jump from there and survive, maybe - but it had an impressive amount of water flowing for mid-August. Definitely worth the diversion.

Tomorrow we head to California, and the first decision is whether to drive by the world's last Blockbuster store, about five blocks down the road from where we are staying. I'm inclined not to bother - I suspect it looks like a Blockbuster.

Segment 5: Mid-Segment Post

 

Potomac Great Falls

I am about 75 miles along a 167-mile stretch that follows the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which follows the Potomac River and has not operated as a working canal since 1924. It is now a National Historic Park with a trail alongside the canal.

By now I have traveled from Georgetown in DC past Great Falls, pictured here, and the West Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, known for, among other things,  John Brown's raid in an unsuccessful effort to start a slave revolt in 1859.

Maryland has a strange shape to it; it is divided into three sections: one east of Chesapeake Bay and mostly cut off from the rest of the state, a main area west of the bay, and then a panhandle that pokes west between West Virginia to the south and Pennsylvania to the north. At one point in this western part of Maryland, the state narrows down to two miles wide, but then it widens out again and goes another 40 miles west. In this western area, there are only little towns like Accident, population 338; Friendsville, population 437; and our eventual destination, Oldtown, a census-designated place with a population of 30, where we will cross the Potomac River into West Virginia by way of a privately-owned bridge, about 90 miles from where we are now.

August has been a good walking month, as I have walked over 5 miles and 12,000 steps per day, but tomorrow, the 14th, is the last walking day of the month. Starting Tuesday, we will be driving across the country, on vacation and taking a break from walking, and we will not get home until a week into September.

Total walking so far is just under 225 miles, less than five percent of the whole trip.

Segment 4: Washington, DC

Washington Monument

Washington, DC now joins Delaware and Maryland as places I am visiting on my virtual walk across the US but have not visited in person, at least as far as I remember. My brother says I visited DC when I was very young - he was old enough to remember, but I have no memory of it. West Virginia will be the same - I am sure I went there as a kid, because we lived close when we were in Akron, but I do not remember. After West Virginia, I have been in each of the states all the way to California except Kentucky, which will be just an 8-mile side trip out of Ohio and back.

The trail takes us north of the White House, Capitol Hill, and the Washington Monument, but they are less than one mile from Georgetown, the Washington, DC neighborhood where this segment ends by the Potomac River, so a side trip seems like a natural choice for anyone actually walking the trail.

In the 30 days I walked during July (excluding July 8), I walked just over 150 miles, and over 340,000 steps. It may be difficult to keep that pace during the winter, but five miles a day seems like a good rule of thumb. That makes the whole trip a bit less than 1,000 days, and around 11 million steps.

The next walking post may not come until late November, as the last Maryland segment of the trail is 167 miles long, which will take 33 days. I will be on vacation half of August, half of September, all of October, and three quarters of November, so I expect to finish this segment after Thanksgiving.

I will be writing vacation posts from around the country and across the world in the meantime.

Segment 3: Approaching DC

Annapolis, Maryland

It occurred to me that the area east of Chesapeake Bay - small towns, Delaware, and the ocean - is very different from the area on the west, which includes Annapolis, capital of Maryland, plus Baltimore and Washington, DC, two of the largest cities in the US. So I wondered if the locals have a way of referring to the two sides, like the way we referred to Oakland and Berkeley as the East Bay, and I looked it up, and they do: Eastern Shore and Western Shore.

Eastern Shore was the last segment; we are walking the Western Shore now.

Annapolis, founded in 1649, is right next to the bay, as you can see in the picture, and it is home of the US Naval Academy. From Annapolis, we head west (we will do a lot of heading west for the next few years) toward Washington DC via the town of Bowie. On the American Discovery Trail website is this comment about this stretch of the trail:

"The Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis rail-trail is planned for completion in 2008 and this trail, known as the South Shore Trail, will become the permanent ADT route." [italics mine]

So there is a comment sitting out there about an event that was supposed to happen 15 years ago, and it made me wonder about something I thought about when I was considering taking this trail and was researching it: Is this trail just some big marketing effort, and has the effort been abandoned? And the answer seems to be no, not quite abandoned, but three of the last four "Latest News" posts on the website are quarterly newsletters going back to Autumn 2022, so it seems kind of quiet over there. However, there are stories on the Internet from the last few years, so some people are using the trail.

From Bowie, it is only a few more miles to the town of Greenbelt, a suburb of DC and a planned community built during the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Next to the town is Greenbelt Park, which is administered by the National Park Service and has places to camp, and here is the end of the third segment.

We are only about 10 miles from Washington, DC, and the next segment is only 17 miles long, which will take 3 or 4 days.

Walking conditions are near-perfect these days, and my progress has been good: about five miles per day and over 300,000 steps for the month already. Looking at a map of the US, it looks like Washington DC, which I have not reached yet, is way over there on the right side next to the Atlantic Ocean, barely away from where I started. And it is, but previous experience tells me this is the way, and one day I will be all the way across if I just keep walking. By the time I reach Ohio, which will be next Spring and only about 1/8 of the way, it's going to feel like I am getting somewhere.

Segment 2: Chesapeake Bay

Chesapeake Bay Bridge

The second segment of the American Discovery Trail takes us across part of Maryland, from the Delaware border west to Chesapeake Bay. We cannot walk across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, so we have to get a ride in order to start the next segment on the other side of the bay.

The Internet says Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States, and it is very large: Starting in Virginia at Virginia Beach, it is between three and twenty miles wide, and it extends 200 miles north and nearly cuts Maryland in half.

This 42-mile segment goes through Tuckahoe State Park - 1,800 acres with camping - and the towns of Denton, Ridgley, Queenstown, Grasonville, and Stevensville, like the first segment deliberately going through communities rather than avoiding them.

Stevensville, on the west side of Kent Island, is the end of the road - literally, for walking purposes - so you need a car or a boat to get across the bay. If you wanted to walk around, you could go north and walk about an extra 60 miles, but let's not do that. The trail goes across the bridge.

The next segment is 43 miles long, across Maryland in the direction of Washington, DC. I am getting in 5 miles per day on average. Walking conditions are about perfect now, with clear skies and temperatures in the sixties mornings and evenings when I walk, so the next post should come in another nine days.
 

Segment One: Delaware

Redden State Forest

I have completed the first segment of the American Discovery Trail, walking all the way through Delaware to the Maryland state line, covering 44.6 miles in nine days of walking. One segment down, 67 to go.

I took my first day off during this segment. On July 8th, we drove to Portland, and I did not count any steps I took that day. The way I look at it, if I were actually walking across the country, I might take a break one day and stay with a friend or just take a day of rest. Or I might catch a bus home one day, spend a couple of winter months staying warm, then catch a bus back to where I left off and start walking again. On those off days, I would obviously take some steps, but I would not make any progress across the country, and I would not be thinking about how far I was going to walk each day. Saturday was one of those off days, so the first segment actually took ten calendar days, but nine walking days. 

The trail starts at Cape Henlopen State Park on the Atlantic Coast, then within a couple of miles hits the town of Lewes, still on the coast. Delaware calls itself the first state, because it was the first to ratify the Constitution, and Lewes is billed as the First Town in the First State; it was founded way back in 1631.

Next is the town of Milton, an inland port only a few miles from the coast, with access to the ocean via the Broadkill River. Milton was once the shipbuilding center of Delaware.

Only a few miles down the road, but already halfway across the state, is Redden State Forest, which looks pretty enough and has a place to camp. This part of the trail feels like one could walk it without being a big-time trail hiker, because it passes through at least marginally civilized areas every few miles. When the trail gets to the western states, parts of it will get quite a bit more primitive.

From Redden Forest, the trail goes through small towns - like Cocked Hat, Delaware - on the way to the Maryland border.

Each state breaks the trail into different segments, and Delaware is the only state that contains just a single segment. So we are already moving on to Maryland and the District of Columbia, which combine for 270 miles broken into four segments. The first of those segments is 42 miles long, so the next post should come in about another nine days.

At 4.8 miles per day - approximately 11,000 steps according to my new app - it will take me just over 1,000 days, or two years and ten months, to walk the trail. Taking time off for vacations, illnesses, and possibly being hit by traffic again, figure sometime in the second half of 2026 I will finish. No rush, exactly, this time. I try to walk diligently, but I have no specific end date in mind, just a desire to get all the way to the Pacific Ocean one day.

 

A New Beginning

Cape Henlopen, Delaware

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

Bilbo Baggins

In my last post, I said that I would be hiking more than 5,000 miles. However, I am actually walking the shorter of the two routes across the country, which the trail website says is only 4,834 miles. The details of the hike are described state by state, so I listed the information from each state onto a spreadsheet, and I came to 4,870.8 miles. The difference is not enough to worry about, but still, it is more than a rounding error. Strange. But I will be walking the 4,870.8 miles, because  I can account for that distance.

 On average, I will be blogging every two weeks or so, although the times in between will vary. Especially in the West, segments are longer. In Colorado, someone got lazy, so the segments are almost 200 miles apiece. Not the even once-a-week pace of the last walk. Also, there will be some major breaks starting in August, though I will try to fill in with vacation pictures.

The trail begins at Cape Henlopen in Delaware, a state I have never visited, at least since I can remember. That looks like a sunset in the picture, but since it is at the Atlantic Ocean, sunrise is more likely. It looks pretty there.

Today is day one. My phone says I have walked 4.81 miles. 4,866 to go.

The American Discovery Trail

It's nice not carrying that pack

I plan to start the next walk on July 1. Between now and then, let's say I'm just hanging out in Key West, living the good life.

The American Discovery Trail starts on the Atlantic Coast in Delaware and goes across the country to Drakes Bay, California. Google Maps says that you can walk across in just under 3,000 miles, but the northern route of the Discovery Trail, which I will take, is over 5,000 miles long.

The trail is broken into segments. In the first few states, the shortest segment is 15 miles long, the longest is 167 miles, and the majority appear to be in the 40 to 50 mile range. I plan to write a post whenever I finish a segment, which means a post every week or two usually, but sometimes quicker, sometimes much slower. By design, the Discovery Trail goes through towns and parks and past local tourist attractions, so there may be a little more to write about besides how few people live along the route.

My only goal will be to average 10,000 steps per day, which was my goal for the walk to Miami until I got more ambitious. However, this time I am not going to try to count days when I am on vacation or driving somewhere or sick or injured - I am just going to skip those days. No more walking back and forth in hotel rooms to get my steps in, or walking back and forth across cruise ship decks. The idea is to do the walking on days when I am home, taking Arlo with me twice a day as usual.

And this is an important consideration, because this year, most of the time from August to November, I will be on vacation, and I don't want to worry about steps while I am driving across the country, or cruising across the Pacific, or cruising around Australia. I want to enjoy my trips and maybe blog about my travels instead.

Another change is that I am going to use the mileage on my phone app to measure how I far I walk, rather than assume 2,000 steps per mile. Hopefully the phone is more accurate. This is a bit painful because my new app figures I need about 2,350 steps to make a mile, so my 10,000 steps only amounts to 4.25 miles per day rather than the 5 miles I have been assuming.

I figure I might make it to the California border by 2027.