Journey into New Pathways: Traveling on my Own Two Feet

What is it like to be traveling on your own without the usage of proper transportation? For me, transportation from east to west consisted of an airplane and then from there, it became learning about the public transit system which is mostly buses and at times taxis. But not having your own transportation does mean a chance to get exercise and walk. Every city has a different way with how they do the bus system meaning some towns can have 13 routes and that many buses and they do the route every hour or every 30 minutes. Other cities have one bus that does a loop around the city always going in the same direction and offers a bus out to different cities. The bus around the city might be every hour and then the bus out to another city might occur 4 times per day. Some cities might have two main bus routes that touch different parts of town and then occur a certain number of times per day. Some bus routes have many stops in their routes and other ones have less stops on their routes and a very set number of stops. Some buses have chatty drivers and other ones not so much and they don't like talking to them while they are the driver.

But how do you figure out how to travel around and find buses? For me, I simply go to maps.google.com and put in the starting point and the final destination and see what it can suggest to me such as is there a bus or if the distance is within 2 miles then I have no issues simply just walking it. Google Maps if it pulls up a bus will tell you where that information came from and is a blue clickable word as well that once you click on it, it will bring you over to that transit website. Sometimes I will just type in the name of the city and then a keyword such as "transit system" or "transit center" to see what will pull up on the Google Search engine, which means for this my starting point will be then www.google.com. If I am going between two cities, Google Maps might then suggest a total obscure way of getting between the two spots of interest and in that case I am like there has to be a better way than taking 20 hours so then in those cases I start checking out cities along the two cities I want and then try putting in a shorter distance to see what I will find and in these cases I will use both Google Maps and the Google Search engine to see what I will in fact uncover and might be better to do. A good example of two towns that caused Google Maps to suggest a bus, train, and many other things was between Newport and Coos Bay since in that case Google Maps suggested going inland to some of the bigger cities to travel down to another inland city and then back over to the coast. Newport is a city that partners with several other cities so right off the bat I knew you could easily go between Newport and Yachats for only a few bucks. And then it was easy to get between Yachats and Florence. So basically to get between Newport and Coos Bay is 4 buses that would be an all day journey to get from one town to the other. But when you don't have a car, you need to be prepared for these types of bumps and plan accordingly. So as you might have seen that some towns do partner with other towns and have easy transportation. One I have taken a few times is Valley to Coast Express which a few times per day goes between Newport and Corvallis but has stops in Toledo and Philomath. Newport to Corvallis even by car is about 45 minutes.

When I go to a new town, I do usually end up visiting the chamber of commerce and see if anyone knows how the bus system operates meaning is there one, what are the routes like, and any other information that would be helpful to me. In North Bend, the library can actually tell you a little about the bus system and give you route maps. Some towns do have multiple places where you can pick up the bus routes...some towns you can pick some up at the chamber of commerce, the library, and on a bus.

Some towns have your points of interest very close together and you can literally just walk around the town easily such as Newport which had a flat feeling to me meaning so easy to walk everywhere in that town without encountering a hill. The weather there is also perfect so not ever getting up to 80 F in the afternoon so you don't overheat while walking. Corvallis has some heat so you might warm up while walking but with their bus system it is easy to get around town by a bus combined with some walking so you still feel like you are getting your exercise in for the day.

I am now at a point where I do feel settled down meaning all the places that are of interest are within a 2 mile radius so walking distance. But if I needed to get somewhere else in town further away, I could use a bus or a taxi since this town also has a taxi service that has a flat rate for traveling within the town and the town right above it. A bus service I did get experience using within the last a month and a half was Greyhound which is this case it has partnered with another bus line of sorts so you can buy the ticket on the Greyhound website or the Amtrak website and then check the prices on those places plus the other bus line website. On the Greyhound website, it is easy to pay for the tickets and then you will get an email of the reservation which you can print off and present to the bus driver when you hop onto the bus.

Views from the bus: