MUSCATINE, Iowa — Jim Bragg is on a mission to walk from coast to coast. He’s in no hurry and expects it will take him four years to accomplish the journey.

The 68-year-old Wisconsin man was relaxing under a shade tree Tuesday morning near High Prairie Road along Iowa Highway 22 in Muscatine County.

“I am looking for the Herbert Hoover Trail,” he said as he pointed to a map that indicated the trail crosses Highway 22 near Nichols. “I wasn’t sure if there was a motel up there by Nichols.”

When he found out there wasn’t a hotel for miles, a smile popped out of his burly beard and he patted his backpack and said, “I did see a sign for a campground that’s coming up.”

He had stopped for a week-long respite in Muscatine, where he rested his feet at a local motel and bought new shoes at the mall.

When he left town Monday morning it was 70 degrees with a slight breeze, but his back was still covered in sweat. Bragg, a retired dairy farmer, estimated he had walked about eight miles at about 2 mph. But that is nothing compared to the 1,100 miles he’s walked since he began the trip last year.

When asked why he’s taking the Shoe Leather Express on a cross-country tour, he simply replies, “Because I can.”

Bragg embarked on his trip last year when he left the Delaware coast and made it all the way to New Philadelphia, Ohio, before his feet began to give him problems. He said it became painful to walk and he later found out he had a stress fracture.

“I don’t feel like I have to do this. If it becomes painful or not fun, well then, I’ll quit,” Bragg said.

When Bragg hit the trail again in June he started where he had left off in Ohio. Since then, he’s traveled about 600 miles to get to Muscatine. He plans to finish this leg of the journey in three weeks and begin

again next summer where he ended up.

He’s equipped with a backpack, tent, two pairs of shorts, two shirts, water bottles and a floppy hat for protection from the sun. He also has a musical card with his grandkids’ voices recorded on it, followed by the Willie Nelson song “On the Road Again.”

He says his family, including five children, doesn’t think he is crazy. His wife, Elaine, passed away about five years ago.

Though he doesn’t carry a cell phone, he has a portable satellite device that tracks his location. He sends friends and relatives a prerecorded message at night when he settles in — be it at a hotel, bed and breakfast, stranger’s house or a piece of land off the roadside.

Bragg enjoys meeting people and he has found that the simple things in life, like shade and a breeze, bring him joy.

He doesn’t wear a watch because “time doesn’t really make much difference.”

Though, he has taken a few rides out of convenience or for safety, he says they’ve never been too far. He keeps a journal in which he writes each day and collects names and addresses of those he meets. He plans to update his new friends when he returns to his home in Abbotsford, Wis.

It might take Bragg all day to get out of Muscatine County. Today he plans to continue west. He’ll likely travel through West Liberty, West Branch, Morse, Solon, Ely and Norway on his way to Marshalltown. He plans to end the trip in Des Moines and hopes to be there in three weeks. He’ll start the journey again in Des Moines next year — if he feels like it.

“I have never done anything like this and now that I am old enough to be willing to try and fail, I had to try,” Bragg said. “I’d rather try and fail than die wondering if I ever could have done it.”