ELLEN DUDLEY AND ERIC SEABORG -- 
Trail Scouts and Authors -- 
WELCOME YOU TO THEIR HOMEPAGE  

They invite you to:

• Learn about the American Discovery Trail—and about the scouting expedition that explored the route for the country’s first transcontinental trail.

• Read about American Discoveries, their award-winning book that describes the places they saw, the people they met, their adventures—and misadventures—on the scouting team’s Pacific-to-Atlantic trek.

• See photos and maps from the expedition.

• Learn about their other books and read excerpts.

“Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.”
Charles Kuralt

“To get past the superficial, two-dimensional, merely aesthetic experience you must, eventually, leave the mechanical conveyances behind...”
Edward Abbey

  
(Route of ADT Scouting Expedition)

Now, thanks to the new American Discovery Trail—the country’s first Atlantic to Pacific trail—it is possible to travel across the country beyond the interstates—and beyond the blue highways—and see absolutely everything. It is now possible to travel slowly, out in the open, under the sky, to experience the land and the people in a way you never could if you were speeding past, encased in a fume-spewing, two-ton suit of glass-and-steel armor.

American Discoveries tells the story of the first trip across the country on this trail. It recounts an extraordinary adventure by two ordinary people. These two midlife city-dwellers left their professional jobs to become “professional trail scouts” and cross the continent the old-fashioned way—using muscle power, not horsepower. But this wasn’t a personal adventure. They were chosen by Backpacker magazine and the American Hiking Society as members of an expedition team to find and test a route that would become the first trail to stretch from sea to shining sea—the American Discovery Trail.

“Fine adventure, superb Americana.”      —Publishers Weekly

“Compelling journal...lively writers.”        —Los Angeles Times

“Will lighten the spirits of all who read it...a book worth scouting out...at once the story of their adventure and a slow-motion portrait of an America most of us never see.”           —Denver Post

American Discoveries:
Scouting the Route for the First
Coast-to-Coast Recreational Trail

Ellen Dudley and Eric Seaborg

Mountaineers Books
Hardcover; 301 pages
32 B&W photos; 13 maps
ISBN 0-89886-437-2

Winner of the Barbara Savage “Miles From Nowhere” Award

 In the tradition of Blue Highways and A Walk Across America, this book is a portrait of today’s America. The authors tell of lonesome plains and historic towns, high mountains and hidden hollows, and best of all, the people and places far off the interstates that linger in an earlier age of Norman Rockwell innocence.

Dubbed “a modern-day Lewis and Clark” by the media, these two explorers tested 4,800 miles of trail links—on foot on hiking trails and on mountain bikes on dirt roads and rail trails. Their 14-month journey took them through searing deserts, snowy mountains, heartwarming towns, and finally the Oval Office of the White House.

Dudley and Seaborg found a country that surprised them. People everywhere were full of warmth and kindness, always willing to reach out and help. And the landscapes surprised them too. They found beauty where they least expected it—in the unsung “flyover country” of prairies and farmlands.

They tell their story in ground-breaking style, in two alternating voices—one masculine and one feminine. The perspectives are very different yet complementary. Sometimes together, sometimes alone, the two saw different details, faced different fears, felt different emotions.

Come with them on their California-to-Delaware journey and share their adventures (from getting lost in the trackless desert to freezing on mountain tops), experience their dangers (from stray bullets to dogs’ teeth), and see the beauty they found (from red rock canyons to big sky plains).

Come with them and meet the people who opened their hearts and homes to two strangers:

• the Native American peace activist who led them to his reservation’s sky blue hot spring,

• the solitary rancher who gave them venison steaks for dinner and buffalo robes for sleeping pads,

• the 76-year-old treasure hunter who led them through Butch Cassidy’s canyon country,

• the cowboy who put them up in his bunkhouse when they were stranded in the Rockies,

• the High Plains innkeeper who made them honorary family members on Christmas Day, and

• the Appalachian “we’re just hillbillies” who shared their poaching secrets.

Dudley and Seaborg found a new love of their country and their fellow citizens—and renewed their hopes for America. After all those months and miles they shared John Steinbeck’s sentiments after his trip across America: “From start to finish I found no strangers...These are my people and this is my country.”