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.

 

Retrospective 2: Last Post

 

You can see my route by asking Google Maps for directions, walking, from Cape Flattery, WA to Leavenworth, WA, then Broadus, MT, then Tallahassee, FL, then Auburndale, FL, and last Miami. Except for Auburndale, the in-between destinations are necessary because Google Maps sent me on  a route, then changed the suggested route over time. That series of cities is at least very close to how I tracked my progress.

The walk took 620 days. I averaged 11,297 steps per day.

My best day was in Las Vegas, July 18, 2022 at 33,092 steps. That was about 12,000 more steps than I took any other day.

My worst day was October 25, 2021, at 1,636 steps. Even the day after I got hit by a van, I walked more than twice that far.

In November 2021 I only averaged 8,667 steps per day. In December 2022 I averaged 13,106.

I averaged 11,921 steps per day for all of 2022. That was a good year.

So that was a fun project.

I am going to take a break for a few weeks, then start a different walk, one I alluded to in my blog, in case you want to sift through two years of posts and try to find it. Otherwise, I will post about it soon.

A Look Back By State

I visited fourteen states during my walk across the US. Here are some highlights from each one.

Washington: I got started, kept going, made it out eventually. Washington was fun because I was familiar with most of the places on the route.

Idaho: The first state I got through in a hurry. After three months in Washington, I walked through Idaho in two weeks.

Montana: Montana was a slog. Seven hundred miles, four months. Highlights included the Bob Marshall wilderness, where Lucas once hiked as a Boy Scout; visiting Lincoln, Montana, where Ted "Unabomber" Kaczyinski lived; and realizing how much of the United States, especially Montana, is empty spaces and really small towns, census-designated places, barely-populated places, and so on.

Wyoming: Colony, Wyoming, population zero as far as I could tell, but Jarrod bought me a t-shirt to commemorate it.

South Dakota: I walked through the area near Mount Rushmore, where Jackie and I spent a weekend on one of our first dates, way back in 1992, and I passed places that we visited back then.

Nebraska: There is a fast food chain called Runza that is only in Nebraska. I want to go to one. Also, I hit the halfway point of my walk near Wisner, Nebraska.

Iowa: I walked into Iowa by crossing the 3,000-foot Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge across the Missouri River. The rest went uneventfully.

Missouri: While I was walking virtually through Missouri, I was actually in Utah, where we took Arlo and visited five National Parks, all pretty spectacular. Utah is an amazing place.

Arkansas: I walked across the Saint Francis Sunken Lands, which were created by big earthquakes back in the 1880s. If all goes according to plan, we will visit the sunken lands this summer.

Tennessee: I only walked about 19 miles in Tennessee, the shortest distance I walked through any state. That included going right through downtown Memphis.

Mississippi: Near Tupelo, Mississippi, I crossed the Natchez Trace, a 440-mile trail from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee. There is a parkway that runs along the Trace, and it is another place Jackie and I plan to visit.

Alabama: I passed through Selma, Alabama, and across the Edmund Pettis Bridge. That was cool.

Georgia: Georgia was quick, about two weeks through a corner of the state. The best thing about Georgia was that Florida came next, and Florida was the last state.

Florida: I took my only detour on my walk and went to Auburndale, Florida, my dad's birthplace and still home to some of his family. Also, in real life, I got hit by a van in a crosswalk, but I recovered, mostly, and I was able to keep going. And I made it to 7,000,000 steps.

Day 620: Miami!

It is done. Today I reached seven million steps since I began keeping track 620 days ago on October 1, 2021. I also made it across the United States, or really took enough steps to make it across, going as far as possible north to south as well as west to east.

I have been planning to post this picture, eventually, since somewhere back in Washington.

I will write a state-by-state highlights post and then a statistics and milestone post. Then it's time to move on. But today, celebration.
 

Week 88: One Day More

Manatees

I am close - very, very close. In fact Google Maps indicates that I am possibly within the Miami city limits, or maybe Brownsville. However, we have to remember that the goal is to get to 7,000,000 steps; it just happens that walking to the spot that Google Maps identifies as the location of Miami requires exactly 7,000,000 steps, but the steps are the real goal, not the outskirts of Miami.

I am less than five miles from that spot on the map, less than 9,000 steps from the end, less than one day away. Tomorrow is the day.

I will write another post tomorrow, then a retrospective post or two to finish the project.

Week 87: West of Parkland, Florida

Key West

The last part of my walk will take me through a section of the greater Miami area, a strip maybe 20 miles wide at the widest part but more than 50 miles long, with Miami near the south end and West Palm Beach in the North. In between are Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, and more, and it appears to be one large uninterrupted metropolitan area.

To the west of this thin strip of populated area is the Everglades, all the way across the state, and this is where I find myself this week, near a place called Swamp Monster Airboat Tours, a couple of days away from Parkland, a suburb just west and south of Boca Raton. Once I enter Parkland and civilization, it is a straight south shot down city streets to Miami. When I get to those roads, I will be on the very last stretch of my trip.

Today, I passed 6.9 million steps, and the only question left - barring disaster, we have to add that disclaimer - is whether I will finish the remaining less-than-100,000 steps in ten days or nine. I'm betting on nine.