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.