Live Blogging Our 100 Mile Walk

After months of planning, Cale and I start our 100 mile walk from Bellevue, WA to Great Wolf in Grand Mound, WA today! Friends and family will see us off with a bon voyage party at 4pm.

Watch Us Walk

I will be live blogging as we walk on Twitter. Follow @jteevan or search for #GreatWalk for updates. Note that you do not need a Twitter account to see the tweets; just click on either of the two preceding links. [Update: The tweets we posted have been collected here.]

Walk Background 

• What we are doing
• How we prepared
• Our packing list

The Route

We will follow this schedule:

• The first day: We leave home (live blog of Day 1)
• Day two: The airport (live blog of Day 2)
• Day three: A casino (live blog of Day 3)
• Day four: Tacoma (live blog of Day 4)
• Day five: A military base (live blog of Day 5)
• Day six: Olympia (live blog of Day 6)
• Day seven: A lake (live blog of Day 7)
• The final leg: Great Wolf (live blog of Day 8 and Day 9)
• The trip home: On a train (live blog of Day 10)

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.

100 Mile Walk: The Final Leg

[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: Offut Lake Resort
End: Great Wolf Lodge
Total distance: 14.6 miles

Friday, July 25, one week after setting out from Bellevue, Cale and I will finish our 100 mile walk to Great Wolf!

100 Mile Walk: Day Seven

[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: Holiday Inn Express, Lacey
End: Offut Lake Resort
Total distance: 11.8 miles

On Day Seven, Cale and I veer away from I-5, in part because there are no hotels along the highway between Lacey and Great Wolf, and in part because we are excited to stay in a Cozy Cabin on Offut Lake. Today's walk and destination may be our prettiest. It will certainly be our most pastoral. We will need to stock up on water and snacks for the rode, because there is a long stretch where I do not expect us to encounter convenience stores or gas stations. The directions here are slightly more detailed because I worry I might loose cell service along the way (and thus the ability to navigate dynamically as we walk from my phone).

100 Mile Walk: Day Six

 

[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: Hampton Inn & Suites DuPont
End: Holiday Inn Express, Lacey
Total distance: 14.1 miles

On Day Six Cale and I will spend most of the day walking west. Nothing particularly interesting stands out about Day Six as I explore the details, but it will be fun to get close to Olympia, our state capital. And it is our last day tracking I-5; on Day Seven we veer south and head off on our own.

100 Mile Walk: Day Five

[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: Holiday Inn Express
End: Hampton Inn & Suites DuPont
Total distance: 9.5 miles or 12.4 miles, depending

Today is intentionally a short as the crow flies because I expect it to be filled with obstacles. We have to get from one side of the Joint Base Lewis-McChord to the other, and the base is closed. Unfortunately, the base is also huge, so it is not feasible to go around it. The Visitor Center, where we would need to go to get a permit for access, is only accessible by car from I-5. I am hoping to figure out a way to get permission to walk through the base without having to go there, but am not sure how to go about doing this. If you have ideas, please share!

100 Mile Walk: Day Four

[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.]

I need to get moving on planning the details of Cale and my itinerary, since the walk is less than a month away now! Even after I finish today, I'll still have three more days to map out.

Start: Emerald Queen Hotel and Casino, 9:00am

End: Holiday Inn Express, 4:00pm

Total distance: 12.6 miles

100 Mile Walk: Day Three

[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.]

Looking at Day Three of Cale and my 100 mile journey, it seems relatively unexciting. We will follow the Pacific Highway for pretty much all of the 15 mile journey.

Start: Cedarbrook Lodge, 9:00am
End: Emerald Queen Hotel and Casino, 5:00pm
Total distance: 14.9 miles

Breakfast: Cedarbrook Lodge
Snack: Anywhere along the road
Lunch: Pac Island Grill
Dinner: Emerald Queen Hotel and Casino

100 Mile Walk: Day Two

[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.]

Day Two of our 100 mile journey is slated to be much longer than Day One. Our goal will be to walk from Bellevue all the way to the SeaTac airport. Bing Maps tells me it is only a 20 minute drive, but it will be a day-long walk for Cale and me.

100 Mile Walk: The First Leg

[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.]

The first leg of our 100 mile journey will probably the easiest - and is unquestionably the easiest to plan. The expected route is short and covers terrain we already know well. On the Friday we leave, I will come home from work a little early and hit the road with Cale by 4pm. We have been walking a lot recently, but I wonder if it will feel different to walk away from the house knowing we're not coming back? Perhaps we'll throw a bit of a bon voyage party to celebrate our departure with confetti and poppers.