California Woman Completes Walk Across America

A California woman who just completed a walk across America with her dog and a cartload of supplies still can’t get over how strangers treated her.

“I didn’t have one bad thing happen to me,” said Margie McCauley, 67, a mother of seven from Landers, Calif. “Everyone was so kind.”

Her trip ended here June 22 at the home of a sister she had not seen in nearly 50 years.

The trip will keep her busy for a long time; she promised to write to more than a thousand people she met along the route.

“People brought me food, like the lady that brought me a lasagna dinner to my campsite in Devil’s Elbow, Mo. One lady gave me an umbrella. Families took me into their homes to shower and rest up,” McCauley said.

She set out in May 1995, was delayed by an injury in October 1995, and resumed her trip in April.

She did most of the nearly 3,000-mile trip on foot. Tired of hiking, she bought a 1979-model car about 300 miles west of here in Mansfield, Pa., to drive the final leg.

She’s planning on driving the white Ford back to California soon, stopping to visit friends she made, as well as an ill brother in Arizona.

“It’s hard for me to even picture what she has done,” her youngest daughter, Mary Zimmerman, said from her California home. “I worry about her. But she’s a strong-willed lady. We couldn’t talk her out of it.”

For most of her adult life, McCauley said, she repressed wanderlust to raise her children.

Two bitter blows in 1990 made her examine her life. Her husband, Ralph, died. Then her yogurt shop failed, killing dreams of making a good living. She decided it was time for her adventure.