Cross-country hikers reach Pacific

SAN FRANCISCO -- A husband-and-wife hiking team, who stayed a few months in Carson City, have arrived at the end of their 5,058-mile cross-country trek.

Joyce, 51, and Pete Cottrell, 55, of Whitefield, N.H., reached the Pacific Ocean after 18 months of walking, becoming the first people to backpack the entire official route of the transcontinental American Discovery Trail, according to the organization that helped establish the trail.

They lived in Carson City with trail coordinator Dale Ryan for a few months, working at the north Douglas County Wal-Mart while they waited for the snow to melt off the Sierra.

"We feel like a gift has been given to us, and we just can't say thank you enough," said Joyce Cottrell after she and her husband were welcomed on the beach by about 20 friends, hikers and other people he and his wife met along the way.

"This trail is just unbelievable. The places it goes through, and the people ... the people are the best part," said Peter Cottrell.

The couple left their jobs at a Wal-Mart in Delaware and started the trek across 13 states on March 5, 2002. They took leave of the Atlantic at Cape Henlopen, Del., and followed the American Discovery Trail, facing flash floods, forest fires, knee-deep snow and blinding desert sandstorms.

They nursed sunburns, sore muscles, ankle sprains, blisters, flu -- and their two adult sons, who thought their parents had gone crazy.

But the Cottrells saw this as the adventure of a lifetime, and have no regrets.

On the East Coast, they frequently pitched their tents in back yards because of suburban sprawl. In the Midwest, the midsummer humidity wore them down. But it was the vast, dry stretches of the West that proved to be the greatest challenge.

The American Discovery Trail Society, which pushed for the establishment of the trail and now promotes it, provided support, making water drops in Utah and Nevada that the Cottrells found using global-positioning satellite signals.

After reaching Colorado in November, they stopped hiking until February, taking job as Wal-Mart cashiers to wait out the winter and raise the money needed to complete the trip.

Through it all, they relied on the kindness of those they met, who welcomed them into their homes and treated them to meals along the way.

"People are the best part of the hike, more so than the scenery. It took us by surprise to know the American people are so generous," said Joyce Cottrell.

They particularly remember a retired worker in his late 70s who treated them to breakfast and his homespun philosophy in Herington, Kan., and a former Navy band trombonist who invited them to join his family for dinner in Annapolis, Md.

"What better way to see the country? You really get to know our country and people up close on a daily basis. You can't get it in Winnebagos," Joyce Cottrell told The Associated Press from Virginia City during the trip.

Users can hike, bike or ride on horseback past 10,000 points of interest in 15 states on the trail.

Billed as the "Route 66 of American Recreation," the trail starts in Delaware; passes through cities, mountains and deserts; meandering through 14 national parks and 16 national forests before hitting the Pacific at Point Reyes, north of San Francisco.

The trail officially opened in 2000 -- 11 years after it was proposed by hiking enthusiasts as the first coast-to-coast footpath connecting the popular north-south Appalachian, Continental Divide and Pacific Crest trails.

ON THE NET

American Discovery Trail Society:

www.discoverytrail.org