A second problem that we’re going to face on the first day of our pilgrimage is the question of where we’re going to stay at night. The options in front of us essentially amount to camping, bumming places to stay from like minded nomads and couch surfer friendly supporters, renting a nightly location to rest like a hotel or motel, or having a support vehicle of some sort follow us along the route and provide a place to sleep and recover in the evenings.
As things stand right now, we don’t have a clear path to a support vehicle. I’m honestly not sure we’d take up an offer to drive along with us and provide the nightly shelter, but if you’re interested we’d love to at least discuss the possibilities. Unfortunately for us, we don’t have a line on a vehicle or a person willing to be the drive so for now this is not an option we’re seriously considering.
Renting an nightly location to sleep really sounds good to me in the planning stage of things. We’d might have to carry much less equipment, we’d get an opportunity to spend most, or perhaps every, evening in an air conditioned location in a soft bed that is mostly insulated from the worst impacts of rain, cold, and heat. We’d have access to clean water. We’d be able to take a daily shower and shave.
Though staying in hotels or motels have some significant advantages, there are some non-trivial downsides as well. For one thing, we’d have to plan each day to start and end at our planned lodging location. This is probably workable in the population dense areas on the coast or around cities, but there is a great deal of our trek along US Highway 20 where the ability to access developed areas will be curtailed. In Nebraska, it won’t be unusual to travel almost one hundred miles without hitting even the smallest of towns. There are areas in every state we intend to cross where multiple days of walking may be required to go from one civilization point to another. Finally, there is the expense of pursuing this option. If we’re able to travel our targeted twenty miles per day on average, we’ll spend something on the order of 150 nights on the road. At a very modest $30 per night which I think we’ll all agree may land you in a relatively shady motel, the expense would be nearing $5,000. Even split between two people, this is more money that either of us are willing to budget.
Nope. Staying in hotels or motels will be part of our plan to make the pilgrimage, but not the primary plan for finding a place to stay. We’ll hit the hotels when we need to improve the quality of our rest or get cleaned up after days on the trail. It will be a luxury we look forward to using, but that kind of living isn’t in the cards for us right now. Again, if you’re interested in providing hotel rooms at greatly reduced, or perhaps even free, cost, get in touch (
bwalthrop@gmail.com) so we can discuss the possibilities.
Couchsurfing or the practice of staying for free at the invitation of trail angels, like minded nomads, and supporters has many of the same advantages and disadvantages of staying in a hotel or motel. The expense is greatly reduced with this option, so again, we’re hoping to be able to access this mode of living. Rory, in particular, is looking forward to interacting and becoming friends with a diverse group of people, and the practice of couchsurfing seems custom made to facilitate this type of “cultural exchange.” Again, if you’re a prospective trail angel, drop us a line. We’d love to talk about spending an evening swapping stories of the journey in exchange for a place to rest our heads.
Having examined the options, Rory and I are both pretty firmly convinced that we’re going to be left with camping as the mode of living for the vast majority of the time during the pilgrimage. Camping, especially of the “
stealth variety” is a broad enough topic that it deserves its very own posting. We’ll cover what we’ve learned about the stealth camping way of life in Route Planning III.
