During the Christmas of 1997, Beau Bacevicius and I took in a breathtaking view of the Great Wall of China as it disappeared over the mountain tops from where we stood at Simatai. At that moment, while we pondered this indescribable sight of beauty, we came up with one of the most insane ideas of our young lives: we wanted to walk the Wall's entire 1,800 miles. At that time neither of us knew very much about the Great Wall or its history. We didn't know if anybody had ever hiked the whole way. But we shared a common amazement of the Wall.

Beau's passion for the outdoors began as a small boy when he would travel to Colorado to spend time with relatives. He loves the mountains and is drawn in by their mystical power. My love for the Wall extends back to the summer of1996 when I traveled to Beijing to visit my grandfather, who was working at the time on a joint venture project for Ford Motor Company. I became enchanted with China and began traveling there every year to visit my grandfather, and to see the Wall.

In 1997, I attended the International School of Beijing for a semester during my sophomore year of high school where I began my study of the Chinese language and my obsession for the Great Wall. The following Christmas, Beau traveled to China with me for the first time, We would toss our crazy idea back and forth until we eventually considered it seriously. It the birth of a dream-a dream that we would eventually put everything on line to make into a reality.

We began to research the validity of our idea: Could it be done? Had anyone done it before? Where do we start? The biggest problem was trying to convince the Chinese government to allow such a trek across their country. The route of the Wall would take us very close to a number of military installations and dangerous areas. We could ask no one for advice since only one Chinese man had ever walked the entire length of the Wall-and he was deceased. No foreigner had ever completed the hike because of the Communist government's concerns about national security. We knew of a Brit named William Lindsay who came close, but he refused to help us.

We knew we had to gain permission from the government before we began applying for sponsorships. Through an acquaintance of my grandfather, I met Zhao Jian Wen, an unknown Chinese actor who agreed to use his contacts in the government and Chinese media to help us. He eventually pushed our permits through the red tape and got them approved. Zhao also would be joining us for the hike.

With the permits in place, we felt unstoppable. We got financial support from a tool and die company out of Detroit, Michigan, called Davis Industries, and received gear donations and discounts from Moosejaw Mountaineering, Magellan GPS and Skyway Precision Inc. With our sponsors in place and our supplies bought, Beau and I were ready to hit the trail. We took care of the loose ends in Beijing and on May 30, we headed out to the desert city of Jiayuguan.

We took a two-hour plane trip to Lanzhou, the capital city of the Gansu Province. Then we rode a train for 15 hours to Fort Jiayuguan, the most westerly point of the Ming Dynasty-era Great Wall (its most recent and intact portion). We arrived in Jiayuguan on May 31, It was Beau's 20th birthday so we celebrated accordingly with some Taiwanese friends that we met on the train.

After a few days of unwinding and collecting our thoughts, we packed up our things and headed out for the end of the Wall. Setting off with 60 pounds of gear each, neither Beau, Zhao nor I fully realized what we had gotten ourselves into. This was June 3, an unforgettable day for all of us.

The temperature rose to about 105 degrees (F), which was typical Gobi Desert weather. As we followed the Wall, which in the desert sections is just a pile of rammed earth, we stumbled upon a human skullcap and two legs with everything from the knee down-including shoes and socks-intact. It was only two hours into the hike. The three of us took this as the desert's way of warning us: it's every man for himself.

We pressed on for the rest of the day and the sun began to take its toll. Blisters started to form on our heels and the three of us were hunched from the overwhelming amount of weight we were packing. It was not yet six o'clock when I had to call it quits. A pain swept over my body that was so intolerable I felt sick and all I wanted to do was lay down and sleep. A farmer saw us resting and noticed that we were exhausted and invited us into his small home for the night. It was the first time that Beau or I had ever experienced such a lifestyle. Not having eaten all day, we feasted on eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers and noodles that the family had prepared for us. It was the most fulfilling meal I have ever had. We pitched our tents in their courtyard and sat for a while to think and admire the clear desert sky. We could not help but wonder where we were headed, what the next day had in store for us, or why we were even out there.

They say "Let the journey begin." Well, it certainly had. Two young men from Lake Orion, Michigan and one 41-year-old Inner Mongolian from Beijing set across the endless desert hoping to fulfill a dream. The first few days of the hike had certainly taken its toll on us. The three of us suffered from serious blisters and sunburn, and our hips and shoulders were under tremendous strain. We had been through our first sand storm and were afforded a sneak preview of life in the Gobi. It did not take long for us to decide that this was definitely not a pleasant place and that it would be a wise decision to pick up the pace.

Unfortunately, Zhao had severely rolled his ankle in a wheat field earlier in the hike, so we were forced to slow our pace. But once we learned how to listen to our bodies and keep a steady pace we started to see progress. We found that pushing ourselves too much only made things worse and wreaked havoc on the mind and body. After 10 days of hell we made it to our first checkpoint at a small city called Gaotai, roughly 150 miles from where we had started. We took a day off to rest, wash our clothes and organize the gear that we wanted to ship back to Zhao's wife in Beijing.

We had too much stuff that was unnecessary, such as clothes, camera bags, lights, books and an over abundance of first aid supplies. Because of the warm hospitality of the people, we always had food and never had to boil water. So there were many items that we could afford to drop. For the most part, the locals were amazed by our attempt to walk the Wall and showed great excitement in our adventure. Often times, Beau and I were the first foreigners that these people had ever seen.

Once we shaved the weight off our packs our daily averages increased significantly. We went from 15 miles a day to around 25 miles and felt much better getting out of the tent the next morning. We pounded through the Gansu Province in 33 days and roughly 500 miles, taking us into the Autonomous Province of NingXia. Zhao was still having a hard time with his ankle, eventually causing him to drop out of the hike once we hit our sixth checkpoint, ZhongWei. He did not abandon us completely because the three of us had become extremely close. He still had interests in shooting a documentary after the fact so he stuck with us and met up with us at designated points along the Wall.

Our speed increased even more now that there were only two of us and Zhao was hauling some of our heavier gear with him so that we did not have to carry it. We breezed through NingXia in 10 days, averaging almost 30 miles a day and knocking off about 270 more miles of nasty desert. Speed was in our best interest in this province due to the scarcity of villages near the Wall; we were on our own when it came to food and water. With good health and our bodies in tiptop shape we came to the last desert province called Shaanxi. Much of the northern terrain was desert but we began to notice more and more rivers and trees let us know we were heading in the right direction. Of all the provinces Shaanxi seemed to have the least amount of tangible Wall. It was not until the last part of the province near the city of Yulin did we start to see evidence of the familiar brick and rock that made up the Wall. We flew through Shaanxi, completing 300 miles in 14 days.

After 1,000 miles of hiking we came to the first real brick section of Wall in the mountainous Shanxi Province near a small town called ShuiChuan (Shway-Chwon). It was August 9 and perhaps the best day of the entire trip, Zhao's knee and ankle healed up and he started hiking with us again. To finally walk on Wall that resembled the brick masterpiece in Beijing was unbelievable, and although we still had over 500 miles to go we felt as though we had done it. The weather was amazing that day and we took extra time to enjoy ourselves and take some pictures. A thunderstorm rolled in later that evening and we were forced to throw the rain-flies on our tents, but the day was fulfilling and we were happy.

The rest of the Shanxi Province was beautiful. We followed the Wall as it crawled over rolling fields of wheat, barley, soy beans, potatoes, and corn-a wonderful array of. We walked our way through Shanxi and a small portion of Inner Mongolia in 18 days, covering roughly 350 miles, moving much slower due to the rugged terrain and occasional backtracking. Shanxi soon faded into the last Province called HeBei (which includes Beijing) where we would be ending our hike.

Finally, at Hebei, we had walked over 1,300 miles to get to the last step...only to be tormented by more mountains. On the other side of them lie the beautiful Pacific Ocean. During the last month of the hike, the morale among the three of us remained high because the finish was now in sight. We had set September 20 as our official end date, with our families were scheduled to meet us at the end of the Wall at Shanhaiguan to see us finish. We were excited to say the least, and as we hiked through Beijing, we walked through all the sections of Wall that we had hiked before and loved so much: HuangHuaCheng, Mutianyu, Gubeikou, Jinshanling, Simatai and many other familiar places. We were greeted by friends and media crews from Beijing that had come to see us and hear our story. My grandfather's friend came out to see us and brought with him the largest order from McDonalds that we had ever seen-a taste of home.

After so many miles, we were slow to realize that we had done it. We had finished the trip of our lives. We climbed out of the mountains on the evening of September 19 at Jiushan and walked through the city of QingHuanDao the next day to take our last step at 6:20 p.m. September 20, 2000, on the "Old Dragon Head" which plunges into the Bohai Sea. We were reunited with our friends and family after more than 1,800 miles and 109 days in the wilderness.

An enormous feeling of relief swept over us. We were happy and yet we were confused and even unsatisfied. Often times, the trip would go from bad to worse. But even in those times, we felt free from the hustle and bustle of home. We loved it and we hated it. We saw unexplainable things, the things that dreams are made of and we met people that will forever have an impact on our lives, people that own a share in our success. We have a better understanding for China and its people, The trip made us better people and more open to the world.