Newport to SF, by foot

Each day, 22-year-old Ashley Michaels straps on her backpack and starts walking north along West Coast Highway near her home in Newport Beach, continuing along the boardwalks that run through Huntington Beach and Seal Beach.

The roughly 20-mile walk, which takes her to the southern edge of Long Beach, takes her about four or five hours. Then she turns around and walks back. Michaels’ daily trek is preparation for a more than 400-mile walk she plans to begin in June along the California Costal Trail to San Francisco, where she’ll begin a 12-week internship with the environmental group Greenpeace.

“I really want to be an activist and learn how to teach people to be more eco-friendly,” she said.

Michaels hopes to raise about $6,500 through donations to fund her housing and travel expenses during her internship, where she will work with environmental activists to stop the clearcutting of North American forests for disposable tissue products.

Michaels has spent the past five years traveling through Europe, backpacking and traveling with music festivals in England, all funded by taking au pair jobs overseas.

She graduated from high school a year early, eager to begin a life of travel.

Michaels spent time in Egypt with a local church at 17, working with children in the slums of Cairo.

“I think that trip really opened her eyes to different ways of life,” Michaels’ mother, Lynn Light, said. “She’s always been so adventurous.”

A large map of California was spread out on Michaels’ kitchen table one day last week, already dotted with a few Post-it notes of where she plans to stay during her trek.

Where she doesn’t have friends, she plans to use the website couchsurfing.comto find places to crash.

The site connects people from around the world who are open to having strangers stay at their homes.

“I’ve thought about being a girl and doing this alone, but I’ve traveled by myself before and it’s never really been an issue. Maybe I’ve just been lucky, but I’ve mostly met really good people,” Michaels said. “I’ve got my street smarts.”

Her parents are both supportive of the walk.

“I think this trip is more of the amazing legacy she is building for herself,” Michaels’ father, Loren Christopher Michaels, said. “I know whatever she sets her mind on doing, she’s going to do it and do it with a sense of pride.”

HOW TO HELP

Ashley Michaels plans to begin her walk to San Francisco June 10 from Newport Pier. She’s currently taking donations to fund her travel and housing expenses while working as an intern with Greenpeace in San Francisco. For more information, call Michaels at (949) 642-2908 or e-mail [email protected]. She also plans to document her trip at www.twitter.com/ greenpeacewalk.

Reporter BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at [email protected].