Route Planning II - Where to Live?

As discussed in Route Planning I, the average miles per day travelled is an important metric/planning factor, and Rory and I are still working our way through an agreed upon philosophy of the pilgrimage. We’re still discussing the issue of daily progress, but let’s be honest. That dilemma is going to work itself out because if it doesn’t, there’s not a chance we’ll be able to cover the distances were imagining.

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.

Route Planning I

Now that we’re about nine months from the kickoff date of the Newport to Newport Transcontinental Pilgrimage, Rory Conlan and I have decided that it’s probably time to really get down to brass tacks and start a serious route planning effort. It seems a little silly that we’ve put things off this long, but in our defense, it’s a difficult challenge to agree to and plan for an effort that covers this much scope. We’re also discovering that we are both taking slightly different “philosophical” approaches to the pilgrimage. Getting these philosophical differences out on the table where we can discuss them is starting to be an important part of the planning process.

Now I don’t want to make it seem as if we’ve done no planning at all. Thanks to modern technology, Google Maps in particular, we’ve managed to lay out a route that is pretty detailed and appears to be executable on foot. This is the overview of the route.




One of the first planning factors that this overview route gives us is the total distance from Newport, RI to Newport, OR that we’ll have to cover to successfully complete the pilgrimage. This particular route chalks up at 3,109 miles. Now this is not the only route that we’ve plotted, and it’s interesting to note that for a journey this long the overall distance is pretty sensitive to route changes. The planning factor that we’ve settled on using is a route distance of 3,350 miles.

Once we figured out the overall distance, we begin to break down this distance into daily goals. Based on the walking I’ve done over the last several years in preparation for the pilgrimage, I think that an average daily target between twenty and thirty miles per day is what we’re going to have to accomplish in order to be successful.

Twenty miles per day for 3,350 miles yields a duration of about one hundred sixty eight days. Assuming a mid-March departure, this duration indicates we can expect to complete the pilgrimage sometime in late August or early September. If we’re able to average twenty four miles per day, we can complete the route in early August approximately twenty eight days earlier than the twenty mile per day average. An average daily progress of fifteen miles per day has us finishing the trek in late October with a mid-March start.

After defining these ranges of outcomes, the details of the walking philosophy really begin to become important. For instance, Rory and I both agree that we’re probably going to need a rest day every now and then to make sure we have the physical stamina to finish the pilgrimage. Where we haven’t reached an agreement yet is how we should plan for this short or no walking day.

We’ve basically agreed that we really ought to shoot for an average daily progress of no less than twenty miles per day. One of the factors associated with this decision is weather. Another one is money. We think that if we finish in about one hundred fifty days, the weather will remain reasonable and we won’t run completely out of money to support our families while we chase this adventure.

To average twenty miles per day, you’ve really got to plan the “down days” that both agree we’re going to need. Do you notionally schedule these down days every five days, every week, every ten days, or some other longer duration? It makes a real difference to your walking day targets. For instance, if you plan on one day off every five days of walking, you’re going to have to cover one hundred miles every five days to keep to the twenty mile per day average. That’s four twenty five mile days in a row. On the other hand if you’re willing to extend the rest day out to once a week, you only have to cover about twenty three and a half miles every walking day for six days in order to rest on the seventh. Extending the rest days out even further or deciding to walk a non-zero reduced day for your resting days also makes a big difference in execution.

Rory and I noodled on this dilemma for about forty minutes this morning, and we weren’t able to come to an agreement. It’s not like we’re arguing over these details, but coming to a conclusion for planning purposes is proving elusive.

This is one of many details we’re going to have to nail down over the coming nine months. Wish us luck because we’re going to need it.

Transitions Into a New Future

Today the morning's walk was marked by a great sunrise over the Anacostia. It proved to be an auspicious start to a day where I felt that the transition to a different and I believe better life moving forward gained some significant headway.

Sunrise over the Anacostia

Deep into the third round of thirty day minimalism, the practice is finally getting into a comfortable rhythm, and I'm really liking the results. Meeting new people is starting to gain some traction, and I'm mostly keeping up with a solid effort at previous incarnations of the thirty day principles.

A year ago, I was beginning to sense that major lifestyle shifts might be possible. Now I know they are a reality with some relatively simple rule sets, and that knowledge is giving me a great deal of confidence that almost no goal is out of reach if you make small steps in the right direction and keep it up over time.

Acting the way to right thinking has been the key in unlocking this previously untapped resource for me, and I'm grateful that my focus has shifted from a lethargic intellectual approach to a more active physical approach. I'm also grateful that I've had a great partner in this journey in Rory Conlan. I believe we've supported each other in making some significant changes, and that relationship has really been a bedrock of some of the great things that are happening around both of us.

Today we spent over an hour discussing the walking route between Newport, RI and Newport, OR.  We both approached the challenge in our own way. He tackled it with paper maps in a Rand McNally road atlas, and I took a more digital approach with Google Maps. Regardless of the reference material, this action and discussion helped solidify the path forward in our march toward what I hope will be a collective adventure of a lifetime.

I haven't the faintest idea what tomorrow might bring, but I'm excited to experience the unfolding of what promises to be another great day.