Day 5 · Scheduled earlier
Kruse Junction
Marysville, Washington
Kruse Junction and Marysville’s railway history
This day on the route
- Planned date
- The day
- Walking
- Planned walking
- 11.9 miles
Day 5: 11.9 planned walking miles through the Marysville area to Kruse Junction. The map is an overview, not permission to enter railway property.
Route overview, not turn-by-turn directions.
The planned 11.9-mile leg continues through the Marysville area to Kruse Junction. Railways and timber helped shape the city through which this stage passes.
Kruse Junction is the named endpoint in the founder’s itinerary after the Everett Awareness Day. The route places it in the Marysville area, before the next leg to Arlington. It marks the end of an 11.9-mile planned day between the two cities.
Marysville’s municipal history describes a town transformed by rail access and the timber trade. It incorporated in 1891, the same year the Stimson Logging Company was formed. Schools, a library and other civic institutions followed as the town grew.
The railway history connects this stage with Arlington, whose former depot and trail corridor appear on the next day’s story. These neighboring places developed along routes used to move people and goods. The walking itinerary now links them at a different scale, one planned destination at a time.
From the road
Nine miles to Arlington, and a stranger with a farm
She started the morning at Marysville Fire Station 62, and told them about Roy Chelsen. He was the man at Engine 28, on East Second Street, who twenty-five years ago to the day found a way out along a brick wall and under a pedestrian bridge and got his company clear of the North Tower. In December 2005 he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and the search for his marrow donor became a public appeal on behalf of everyone else waiting. His story is on the Foundation’s Heroes page. The crew were moved by it, photographed her sign, and said they would pass on how to join.
Then 67th Avenue Northeast, which has next to no shoulder and a great deal of traffic. It made for slow going — a few steps, then off the road onto the lip above the gully, every time a car came. She walks facing the traffic and catches the drivers’ eyes, so she knows she has been seen.
Just after noon a white van slowed and stopped beside her. The woman driving wanted to tell her the Centennial Trail was close by, and led her round to a side street where they could talk away from the highway. Jeana explained the walk, and that she relies on the generosity of other people for her food and her bed. The woman apologised: there was no room in the house. Jeana asked whether there might be room in the garden for a tent. She smiled and said they live on a farm — so there was plenty. Her name is Becky.
So the last miles into Arlington were walked on the Centennial Trail with nothing but a day pack, because Becky had taken the heavy one home ahead of her. There was a shower at the end of it, and a hot dinner, and a tent pitched inside an outbuilding in case it rained in the night.
It is a house with three generations in it, and Becky’s daughter Jenny took to the thing Jeana has been carrying all week along with everything else — that a pack teaches you very quickly the difference between what you want and what you need, because you will carry what you need and the rest is only weight. Jenny passed it on to her own children the same evening. Jeana calls it a lovely family and says so twice.
You learn very quickly the difference between what I want and what I need, because you will carry what you need, but what you want is extra and you don’t want to carry that weight.
- Distance walked
- 9 miles
Choose where you live
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United States — NMDP
NMDP accepts new registry members who are 18 to 35, live in the US, its territories or freely associated states, can meet NMDP’s health guidelines, and are not already registered through another US organization. Joining happens at home: you answer a few questions on NMDP’s site, they mail you a free cheek-swab kit, and you swab and send it back. Once you are a member you stay listed until you are 61 unless you ask to be removed — 61 is when NMDP takes you off, not an age at which you can join. NMDP makes the final eligibility decision.
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NMDP — Join the registry · checked Sep 1, 2026
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Sources
Local history and background reading for this stop.
- History of Marysville — checked Sep 5, 2026
- Main Street walking tour — checked Sep 5, 2026
