By Rodger L. Hardy
Deseret Morning News


SPANISH FORK — It's been a long, strange trip for Joe Hurley. Hurley will pass through sleepy towns and bustling cities, even a stretch through Death Valley, before he reaches the Pacific Ocean.

His path: The highway that connects rural America's small towns — U.S. 6.

The highway used to go from Cape Cod, Mass., to Long Beach, Calif. In 1964, the road was closed at Bishop, Calif., at the foot of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

But Hurley, a writer by trade, decided to take the scenic route — and he won't be in a car. He'll walk the across-the-country route, with the final stop in Long Beach, where he plans to dip his hands in the ocean.

Last week, Hurley walked from Price to Spanish Fork. And he was glad he walked away from that leg of the walk with his walking legs intact, considering how fast some of the cars and trucks were driving.

The road is said to be one of the most dangerous in Utah.

Police say excessive speeds cause most accidents in Spanish Fork Canyon.

Hurley's jaunt cuts through the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania, brushes the Great Lakes and heads into America's heartland, Hurley wrote on his Web site, www.route6walk.com.

Travis Lindhorst, a photographer, is his traveling companion, and they are always on the look-out for offbeat stories for 15 newspapers that publish their tales of life on the road.

The trek started in March at the tip of Cape Cod, where Hurley dipped his hands in the Atlantic, then pointed west. In all, the trip will cover 14 states, some 3,600 miles and about 500 small towns. Updates are posted on his Web site.

Hurley, who worked as a reporter for the Danbury News-Times in Connecticut for more than 30 years, sat back one day in 1999 and realized he hadn't seen the western side of that state.

So he and photographer Dave Harple took a few days and walked the distance.

"It took a week," he said, "from east to west."

Then, he wondered where U.S. 6 went from there. Known as America's Byway, the road is less traveled and often far away from busy interstates.

Joe Hurley, a retired newspaper reporter, walks along U.S. 6 in Utah. He began his trek in March at Cape Cod.

Because it's off the beaten path, the highway has become an adventure for the pair in learning about the people who make up America.

Hurley said he often wondered if the kind of folks he grew up with in the 1950s and 1960s could be found in 2004 — a vastly different era.

Could they be living in apartments in large metropolitan cities?

How about rural America? If he was going to find them, he says, he guessed that's probably where they'd be.

Along the way, he's found that America is made up of two kinds of people — people who live in the city and the people who don't. And those who live in the country — not surprisingly — appeared more friendly, more open than the masses that make up the East Coast, Hurley said.

"Everybody waves to everybody. I got so used to it I waved to a post," he said.

Hurley walks 20 miles a day with Lindhorst following in a faded, red Geo. Often people stop to offer him a ride. That didn't happen until well after he left New England, he said.

Sometimes people walk with him. They may walk a mile or several miles. One elderly lady walked two blocks, he recalled.

"I like to see people help each other out more," he said. "I've seen that more outwardly here," he said of Utah.

He's developed a pet peeve along the way. Where new commercial ventures have been built along the route no consideration has been given to pedestrians, he said. "There's no place to walk."

To Hurley, Colorado's Glenwood Canyon ranks high on the list of the most interesting stretches of U.S. 6. The superhighway through the canyon was built without destroying the scenic beauty of the wilderness, he said.