PRINCETON - You know the kind of people who circle a parking lot three or four times to avoid walking a step further than they have to?
Joe Hurley isn't one of them.
Hurley, a columnist and retired reporter at The News-Times in Danbury, Conn., is more than three months into a walk that will take him from Provincetown, Mass. to Long Beach, Calif., a distance of 3,600 miles.
Hurley entered Bureau County on Sunday morning. He is crossing the country on Route 6. He arrived in Bureau County, passing St. Bede Academy and soon encountering the curves east of Spring Valley.
"Is that the one with the hospital?" Hurley said. "I said 'My, this is curvy. It kind of reminds me of my hometown.'"
When you've been on the road as long as Hurley has, the cities start to blur together. Hurley is on the road to meet people, though, and those remain clear in his mind.
Hurley spoke about his observations, prior to arriving in the county. As he got close to Chicago, he said people quit stopping on the road to offer him help. Once he got past Joliet, drivers started stopping again.
"The difference in people," Hurley said, smiling. "I had four yesterday. One was a young guy, another was a woman and there were two farmers."
Hurley is accompanied by photographer Travis Lindhorst.
"He (Lindhorst) drops me off in the morning and picks me up at night," Hurley said. "Usually, he cruises by at least once a day and makes sure I'm still walking. He waves as he drives by."
In addition to driving Hurley to and from motels and taking photographs, Lindhorst tries to find what's beneath the surface of the towns they pass through.
"For me, it's getting a sense of what's this town about?" he said. "What are these people like?"
It always comes back to the people.
"The most interesting are the people," Hurley said. "I didn't know this was going to be the case in beginning, but now, I say this is why I'm doing it."
Hurley walks 20 miles per day, five days a week. The off days are for filing stories about his trip on his Web site, www.route6walk.com, and visiting local attractions.
It's a tough schedule.
"I need to keep moving, because we need to get over the Rockies before the snow," Hurley said. "You think it doesn't make much difference if you don't do 20 miles a day, but if you consistently do 18, that's 10 miles less a week, 20 miles in two weeks; and that's one day behind. You add that up over three months and all of a sudden, you're a week behind; and it's snowing in the Rockies.
"On the other hand, what's the point if you're not going to stop and talk to people? It's always a balancing act."
On his first day in Bureau County, Hurley already had found things and people of interest.
"In Seatonville, I stopped to get a soda," he said. "There was a soda machine outside the fire department. I went to put my money in, and the door was open. You could just go in and grab a soda. Somebody could have broken in, but my guess is they didn't see the need to lock it. So, I put my 50 cents in."
Hurley was also interested in his hosts at the Bird's Nest Motel, new manager Hasvmati Vithalani and her parents Dev and Henna Vithalani.
"There are Indians buying businesses all over the place, and we hardly ever do stories on them," Hurley said. "Who are they? Where did they come from? Why are they here? That sort of thing. It was really interesting."
Hurley said the trip has not been what he expected.
"But then I didn't expect it to be what I expected," he said. "I told Travis one of the first requirements for both of us is to be adaptable and versatile because things aren't going to go the way we expect them to."
Hurley said his only disappointment with the trip is the lack of time.
"You think because you're walking, you have time to stop and see everything and do everything," he said. "You think 'I'd love to see that, or I'd love to do that. But I can't.' You get to the point you kind of say to yourself 'It has to be a really good story for me to stop now.'"
