100 Mile Walk: The Trip Home

[This post is part of a series detailing Cale and my plans for each leg of  our 100 mile walk to Great Wolf. Our goal is to establish a safe route that follows sidewalks and trails as much as possible, and provides good places to stop, refuel, and refresh along the way. We actively solicit your suggestions if you know the area we will be walking through.]

Start: Great Wolf Lodge
End: Centralia Amtrak Station
Total distance: 6.4 miles

After a full day of no walking (but lots of MagiQuesting and water sliding), it will be time to head home. No, we are not walking another 100 miles home! Instead, we will take a short walk on our weary legs to the local Amtrak station and catch the train to Seattle.

Morning

Start: Great Wolf Lodge
End: Bill & Bea's Drive In
Total distance: 4.5 miles
Time: 2 hours (9:30am - 11:30am)

We'll start out with a half hour at the pool, since the Great Wolf waterpark opens at 9am. Then we will walk to the Amtrak station via our favorite Great Wolf lunch place, Bill & Bea's Drive In. I get hungry just thinking about my upcoming hamburger with swiss, mushrooms, and grilled onions. Yum! We know the route from Great Wolf well, although we've always only driven it. Cale and I will simply follow Old Highway 99 until we get there. There aren't sidewalks en route, but we'll walk carefully.

After Lunch

Start: Bill & Bea's Drive In
End: Centralia Amtrak Station
Total distance: 1.9 miles
Time: 1 hour (12:30pm - 1:30pm)

From Bill & Bea's, we will take Harrison Avenue under I-5. After 1.1 miles we will bear left onto Main Street. Main street takes us, in half a mile, to Railroad Avenue, where we will find the train station to the left.

The train we plan to take (the 506 Amtrak Cascades) leaves the station at 1:46pm. 2 hours and 19 minutes later, we will arrive at Seattle's King Street Station. Alex and Cale's three brothers will come pick us up at 4:05pm and drive us home to where we started out on foot ten days prior.

Total Distance Traveled

On our walk to Great Wolf, Cale and I will cover 101.3 miles over the course of 8 days. Excluding the short first day, we will walk an average of 14 miles per day. The final short walk to the train station adds another 6.3 miles, for a total of 107.6 miles on foot.