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.