When 29-year old Ben Davis opened his eyes last week, all he saw was pink: Pepto Bismol-colored walls and carpeting, accented by puffy pink bows, faux pink flowers, flowy pink ribbons and accent chairs with a pink floral pattern. “It was very strange,” he says of the church bridal suite he’d spent the night in — a place, he jokes, where Adam Sandler might sing at a wedding.
Still, that was a big improvement from some of the places he’s slept in the weeks prior: A broken-down camper by the side of the road in California; a “scary” hotel in Arizona with overturned tiles on the floor, paneling hanging from the ceiling and barely any running water; a tiny clearing behind a bush off the side of the highway in Colorado.
But for a guy who hopes to spend just $40 per day as he traipses across the country — he spoke to MarketWatch from Kansas — that’s to be expected.
On Feb. 27, Davis set out from Huntington Beach, Calif., with the goal of walking all the way to Boston on a $6,000 budget. That shakes out to $40 a day for everything from water to restaurant meals to hotels to any extras he needs, like a new pair of shoes or extra Band Aids. (Of course, staying within his budget is helped enormously by the fact that he doesn’t have to pay for gas.)
Each day, Davis walks 25 to 30 miles along the highway pushing a jogging stroller containing his clothes, water and snacks, a tent, sleeping bag and laptop. He eats at restaurants usually about once a day and figures out where to sleep as he goes along.
At first, he says, he would blow his money on hotels every couple of days or so — now, he only splurges every four to five days on one, and even then looks for rooms that cost about $45 or less per night — but lately, he’s relied a lot on the kindness of strangers. “I’ve slept in more beds than I’ve camped,” he says. “Strangers just open up to me and say, ‘Come sleep in our guest bedroom.”
Indeed, people often see him walking by the side of the road or parked in a McDonald’s and are curious about what an average-looking guy (think cargo shorts and a The North Face jacket) is doing with a loaded-up jogging stroller. When he explains it, some of them invite him to stay in their homes — where he gets a shower and access to laundry (he says he hasn’t gone more than three days without a shower) — others to camp in their backyards.
“People ask me how many crazy people I’ve met,” he says. “The answer is zero, there have been no times where someone was negative to me. The only people who are negative are Internet commenters,” he says. (Davis, a writer, documents his travels online as he goes.)
His big indulgence is food, which he sometimes spends $20 or so a day on. “It’s so nice after a long walk to sit down in a restaurant,” he says.
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He also pays for the occasional movie to entertain himself, but explains that he doesn’t do that very often. “One of the biggest surprises is that I don’t get bored much,” he says. “I’m constantly thinking, creatively writing in my head, having hypothetical arguments with myself that would never happen in the real world.”
Plus, he meets interesting people as he walks. Among them, another man who was also walking across the country (people who walk across the country tend to push jogging strollers, so when Davis — who was then sitting at a McDonald’s in Kansas — saw the man’s stuffed stroller, he knew he was a fellow walker).
“Only about five people do this [walk across the country] a year,” says Davis. “So when I saw his jogging stroller, I ran to greet him.” The man was walking from Tallahassee, Fla., to Seattle; while Davis was traveling from L.A. to Boston. “He was going the totally opposite route of me,” he says. “What are the chances we’d end up in the same McDonald’s at the same time?”
Davis plans to complete his walk on July 23 —a day he expects to make his 90-year-old grandma very proud. She is an avid traveler and most recently visited the North Pole. “I’m doing this for MeeMaw,” he says. “She always put an emphasis on travel, the adventures you get, the people you meet. She’s getting older now, and this walk is an ode to her life.”
This article was originally published on Marketwatch.