By Jo Ann Hustis Herald Writer
jhustis@morrisdailyherald.com

People are intrigued that someone — Joe Hurley in this case — is walking across America.

“That somebody would be walking that far,” Hurley said Thursday, during a stopover in Morris during his hike from Massachusetts to the West Coast on U.S. 6.

“The first question I get is, ‘Why are you doing that?’ A lot of people assume its some sort of charity thing.”

It’s not. A retired newspaper reporter and columnist, Hurley just decided to walk the entire 3,600 miles of U.S. 6 to discover America foot by foot.

He’s taken about 3.3 million steps so far. The whole trek is roughly 10 million steps. He’s halfway through his third pair of walking shoes.

“Which means about nine pairs of shoes to walk across America,” he said.

The impetus for Hurley’s trek began after he noticed U.S. 6 cuts across Connecticut. So, he walked across that portion with a photographer, which worked out very, very well, he said.

“Then, out of curiosity, I checked to see where U.S. 6 went after it left Connecticut,” he said. “It went to the Cape (Cod), which I thought was a long way. Then I started checking west, and it was a very long way. Then I saw it went coast to coast, and I said, ‘We need to walk the whole thing some day.’”

Hurley said he is just as glad now that he’s doing it as when he started the trek.

“Because when I started, I didn’t know if I’d make one day and one week,” he said. “My first goal was to get off Cape Cod — at least to have done something. I wanted to get through New England so they wouldn’t laugh at me too much.

“Then, if I made it to Ohio — basically, going from Boston to Cleveland is a feat in itself,” he added.

“Then I made it to Chicago, and now my next goal is Davenport (Iowa.) They have great ice cream there.”

Sometimes the traffic can be scary, said Hurley, who noted U.S. 6 in locations, such as from Orland Park to Joliet, is not conducive to hiking.

“I walk on the shoulder of the road as opposed to walking in the dirt and such. The chances of twisting an ankle are pretty high if you’re going to step unseen into grasses and such,” he said.

Hurley said his big fear of leaving the shoulder for the berm would be snakes.

He walks during the day and attempts to cover 20 miles during the time period from about 8:15 a.m. to somewhere between 4 and 4:30 p.m.

It’s an adventure, noted Hurley, admitting there’s an element of danger in those stretches of U.S. 6 where there’s virtually no shoulder and cars and trucks whizz by inches away.

“Trucks generally will kind of swerve out of your way if they have the opportunity, but cars less so,” he said.

“The tough ones (for walkers) are the oversize loads. In Ohio and Indiana, there are tons of oversize loads. They are trying to avoid the toll roads. And in Nappanee, Ind., they make modular homes, right off U.S. 6. Also, you get an awful lot of farm equipment, either by itself or carried on a flatbed truck.”

This is Hurley’s second trip across America, but the first on foot. The other experience was by train with his family.

“Which was terrific,” he said. “And I guess the trains roughly follow the route of U.S. 6 - they go to Chicago and to Denver and to Salt Lake City.”

Weather has been a problem for Hurley only once to date.

“I told a radio interviewer I was never forced off the road because of bad weather,” he said. “At the time, it was sunny out. Two hours later, I was calling Travis on the phone to get me out of here. I was by a cornfield, with lightning coming down.”

His reference was to Aurora, Ill., native Travis Lindhorst, the freelance photographer who is traveling by vehicle with Hurley as backup support.

Dogs are really not a problem to Hurley as he treks U.S. 6.

“Because all the dogs have been chained,” he said. “On U.S. 6, you have to do that, or you’re not going to have a dog very long.”

Lindhorst also fields questions from the curious along the way.

“They say, ‘Why are you doing it?’” he said. “But I don’t follow along — that’s a misconception. They think I’m following him at two to three miles per hour. I don’t, I just drop him off at the starting point in the morning, and pick him up at the finish in the afternoon.”

Lindhorst applied to be Hurley’s backup man after reading a small ad.

“He put a little ad out, and I applied. I do freelance work, and my job was coming to an end anyway,” said Lindhorst. “This is a little different, but I’m a photographer, and so I think this whole thing is great.”

The scariest part about the walk is realizing a vehicle has gone by just inches away from him, said Hurley.

“If you see them coming, it’s not a problem,” he noted. “If you’re walking on the wrong side of the road, it will make you move over to the other side real quick. You look and say, ‘My God.’”

The incidents he cannot control are when he is walking on the left-hand side of the road and a vehicle is passing.

“They probably weren’t expecting to see someone walking on the road, and all of a sudden, they’re in trouble and you’re in trouble, except you never know it until they’ve gone by,” he said.

“You hear it, and all of a sudden - Wow. You think that if for some reason you had stepped out just a little bit, because there’s no traffic coming this way at you...”

All that walking, and yet Hurley has not lost weight. Well, maybe a pound, but that’s all, he said.

“When I started out on the walk, I was eating everything in sight. Now, I’m a little more judicious,” he said.

Hurley said he would not walk across American again, however.

“I would not do it twice,” he said. “I would not turn around and walk back — not for that distance. It takes you too much away from your family and home.”

Neither did Hurley see a U.S. 6 Walk Two in his future.

“I do see a book, though,” he said. “A lot of people have asked us about doing a book.”

Hurley was scheduled to depart from the area of the western Morris water tower around 8:15 a.m. today en route for Ottawa.