Zoe Francis
PLEASANTON
When most folks set out on a cross-country trip, they load up their car and hit the road.
Ken and Marcia Powers buy extra shoes and stockpile enough food to last as long as it takes to hike across the United States.
"I think it's fair to say that we like hiking," Marcia said, in what can only be described as a huge understatement. "We like adventure. Our favorite part is being out in the wilderness.
"You have the terrain, the woods, the whole area to ourselves. It's just us and the animals. We're immersed in nature. We get to see our earth up close."
The Pleasanton couple recently made the record books by being the first couple to hike the American Discovery Trail all the way through with no breaks. It was a 4,921.5-mile journey — don't forget that extra half mile — that took them from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean in eight months.
"Even to us, that's overwhelming," Marcia admitted. "Five thousand miles is huge. We look at it state by state or day by day."
"Mail drop to mail drop," Ken added.
Oh, yes, the mail drops. That's how the uber-organized hikers get supplies when they're hiking, often times in the middle of nowhere. Forty oversized boxes were packed full of food and other supplies for the Powers' adult sons to mail to post offices along the hike route.
The Powers will talk about their hike and share their photos from the trail Monday evening at the Pleasanton library.
The couple spent an entire year planning their American Discovery Trail hike, sending off for maps and scanning the Internet for grocery stores close to the trail.They couldn't rely on the sage wisdom of those who had gone before them because nobody had ever hiked the entire decade-old trail.
The Powers are seasoned veterans when it comes to long-distance hiking. They tackled their first big hike, the 200-mile John Muir Trail, in 1998 and again the following year.
In 2000, just months after Ken retired from Chevron, they struck out to hike the Pacific Crest Trail that runs along the West Coast from Mexico to Canada.
They took it easy the next year with a short hike around the Tahoe Rim Trail, but had their eyes on the next big conquest — the Continental Divide Trail in 2002. That relatively new trail also traverses the country from south to north.
In 2003, the Powers completed the rare triple-crown of hiking when they hiked the Appalachian Trail.
Hiking the country from south to north three times simply whetted the couple's appetite for the American Discovery Trail, the granddaddy of all U.S. trails.
The Powers started walking last year on Feb. 27 at Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware at the shore of the Atlantic Ocean. They hiked day in and day out, only rarely taking a day's break, until they reached Point Reyes National Seashore and the Pacific Ocean on Oct. 15.
While nature beckons to them on the trail, the couple admitted that meeting people is one
of the best parts of hiking cross country.
"We met people who would never be in the sphere of our normal, day-to-day living," Marcia said. "We talked to the heartland farmers. In West Virginia, we were up on Sunshine Ridge talking to a very poor family. They were the only people who were there year round."
"We would go into the general stores in small towns and sit down at a table with the locals, so we'd all chat together," she added. "We got to see the country like nobody else ever sees it."
They slogged through floods in Ohio, dodged lightning strikes in Kansas and endured 114-degree temperatures in the Utah desert. A low point came when they crossed into Utah and found someone had vandalized a water supply they had buried a full year earlier.
"Our spirits were really low," Marcia confided. "We were really worried."
Their luck changed when they realized that only that first stash of water had been vandalized. Other stashes throughout the dry parts of Utah and Nevada were just fine.
The Powers figure they've hiked about 13,000 miles and through 30 states since they were bitten by the hiking bug in 1998.
"We never intended to hit a lot of states," Marcia said. "By the time we did the three trails, we were even surprised at the total."
The hiking dynamos have been home only a few months, yet they're once again eager to strap on their hiking shoes and head out into the wilderness. No more cross-country treks, though. Family duties, such as aging parents, will keep them from hiking for months on end.
"It was too long being away from home," Marcia said of their eight-month journey. "We miss friends and family."
In the same breath, she starts talking excitedly about hiking the Arizona Trail, which stretches from the Mexican border and runs all the way to the Utah border. At a mere 800 miles, Marcia's confident they could tackle the trek in six weeks.
"We want to do more long-distance hiking," she said enthusiastically. "We really enjoy this. You get to walk and observe nature all day. You don't have to do any chores. The food is all planned. At the end of your day, you just crawl into your sleeping bag. It's a really simple lifestyle."
You can read the Powers' trail journals at http://www.gottawalk.com.
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