My Walk Across The Country

Today marks the end of my second year walking across the United States. Virtually, that is. A couple of years ago, I was looking into some sort of virtual walk. I could never figure out how to start my own, other than getting a certain distance from one place to another, like from where I live to where my parents live (cross country). That seemed pretty boring. I stumbled upon this site, and knew I had found what I was looking for. It tracks your progress cross country. You start out in Yorktown, VA and end up (eventually) in Florence, OR.

Every time you complete your walking, biking, or running for the day, you enter in your distance (up to the .1. It won't calculate .25 mile), and it gives you a snap shot of where you are on the route. It also gives you an updated tracking line. When you start, the line is red, and as you progress, it turns black. It gives you a picture of where you are (the snapshot) and also gives you a map of where you are in the general area, where you are in the state you're currently in, and a map of the whole country.

I've been doing this now for two years, and I've walked (on the elliptical) a total of 135.8 miles. I'm about 2.3 miles from Mineral, VA, and it's going to take me a very long time to reach OR. But that's OK. It's a great motivational tool to keep me going. I always look forward to entering my distance each time, and seeing where I am. I'm on a two lane road right now, with lots of green trees, and the snap shot for today has a few cars on the road.

 I thought it was a pretty cool site when I found it. And another cool thing is SparkPeople created a team almost a year ago and all of the members use that site. Most of the members have passed me by already, but that's OK. It's not a race. One of the team leaders just made it to the state of Kentucky. Pretty cool.

So, if you walk, run, or bike, check out this site, and start tracking your progress across the country. It's going to keep you motivated to keep moving.