On December 20th, 2010 the pedometer that I ordered arrived. I was thrilled to have it, since I had enjoyed the one I had used a couple years ago so much that I had literally worn it to death. I posted a message on the "Bravo board" on Weight Watcher's site asking if anyone else used a pedometer and one of the gals said that yes, she did and she was enjoying tracking her mileage on a site that provided a virtual walk across America - http://exercise.lbl.gov. I quickly looked up the link, and within just a couple moments was so captivated by what I saw that I had to join up too! This looked like fun - using my daily mileage to virtually walk across this beautiful country of ours.
If you've spent much time around me you know that I have several flaws and one of them is that I'm rarely happy with the tools I've been given to work with. I constantly want to change or tweek things to fit what I want. While the TransAmerica site has a series of maps and a nice tracking utility and pictures of the walk, I wanted to see my progress on a clearly defined street map. I also wanted more information on the route. I turned to Google Earth for this. So I tried tracing in my route on Google Earth.
What happened next is that I became frustrated with the website's lack of information on the actual route. The directions and maps were vague and difficult to follow. Enter Adventure Cycling Association's Bicycle Touring Maps of the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail. I ordered two of these, which cover the first 742 miles, and am very happy with them. The maps are beautiful, durable and not cheap, but very detailed. I love maps and these are really nice ones!
By the time I had the maps I was already 6 weeks into the journey, which meant that I had to catch up. Today I am caught up with the mapping and have decided how I want to document this journey. I will be posting a map of where my travels have taken me on a weekly basis. I will also be adding any embellishments such as historical sites, photos, etc after the map is loaded. So basically, checking once a week will keep you caught up with my meanderings. Because I am behind, I'm going to start with the past week and catch up with the other weeks I've already walked as I have time. Eventually you will see the beginning of the journey.
If you decide to try this journey yourself, let me know. It would be fun to see how a fellow traveler is doing!
Cheers!
donna
2/20/2011
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