Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
I am doing this trip all on public transportation, portal to portal. As many modes in the mix as I can come up with. Picking up the local bus, Cape Cod RTA right outside my door, connecting with the (I kid you not) Plymouth and Brockton Street Railway Company bus to Boston. Jet Blue to SFO, Super Shuttle to the CalTrain Station in The City. Then the Amtrak Bus Train Bus to Emeryville, Merced and Yosemite Visitor Center. Then 220 miles or so on foot to Whitney Portal, hitch to Lone Pine, followed by ESTA to Reno, Amtrak (all train this time) back to Boston, and the aforementioned bus lines back to my front door.
This will be my first trip in forty-five years or so that didn't involve may own private car at some point, at least a rental. It will be interesting to see if I can actually make all these connections without resorting to a friend's car at some point. It seems like public transportation ought to be easier than this.
The complexity of getting around the country also brings back to me to me the significance of traveling some five or six thousand miles by machine in order to walk a couple of hundred. The trail is less than 5% of the trip by that measure, although it is 80 percent of the time and 99 percent of the reason.
Back next month, with a report on the 99 percent.
Peace out
Dog
