My longtime friend, Jo. is one of those people you can call and say, “let’s get up early tomorrow and go for a twenty mile walk” and get a reply like, “I’ll be at your house at 5:00 a.m.” And she’s there. At your door. On the dot.

It’s only logical that she’s the friend with whom I chose to walk the length of the California Coast. In fact, when I suggested it, Jo replied, “Why stop there? How about Mexico to Canada?”

We’ve been walking the coast in increments since 2021. Initially, we’d walk as far as we could in a day then drive back to Santa Cruz. Now we have to drive six hours or more to reach our last stopping point. The further we venture from home, the more complicated the excursions. Now we go for at least five days each time, two days for traveling and setting up/taking down camp and three days of walking.

We’ve camped in a yurt at the Mexico/California border, at Hip Camps in Northern and Southern California, RV parks, parking lots and a seaside motel in Ocean Beach. We set up tents or sleep in our cars. Two of our friends, Consuelo and Bruce, have joined us for various legs of the journey, but primarily it’s just Jo and me walking side by side or a half mile apart as the mood strikes.

We’ve met countless characters along our routes. We stop and chat with people about their gardens, their families, their artwork, their pets. In turn, people pepper us with questions about our coastal walking project. In an industrial area of Los Angeles County, we met an elderly woman, who had just damaged her car when she accidentally rear-ended a semi truck and escaped with no apparent injuries. We stopped and visited with her on the roadside while she waited for a friend to come pick her up. She told us about a spark of an interest she had as a girl scout when her troop went on a sailing trip. Over her lifetime, she nurtured it into a passion, becoming a tall ship sailor. She showed us a tattoo of a tall ship on her ankle.

The California coast is 880 miles long. Our walks have covered 526 miles to date, but we’re not nearly halfway done. The miles account not only for walks right along the sand, but also the long inland stretches we have to cover to circumvent the Los Angeles Harbor or find roads away from areas where busy highways are the only accesible route along the ocean.

At some point on every walk, one of us invariably pronounces. “This is the best walk yet!.” and Jo issues the remind, “The best walk is the one where on.”