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"Sometimes they will think you want peace and quiet after your day, and put you up in a hotel and take you to dinner, but I prefer to stay at the homes because there's a community, and you learn from them, and learn about the area. I've been talking to myself all day. I'd prefer to talk to other people."

He also said the encounters he's had on the long stretches of road, especially through the scenic highways of Tennessee, southern Mississippi and Louisiana, have been highlights.

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Ehredt's family, including his grown children who live on the East Coast and his partner who lives in Idaho, checked in periodically as he made his way south. His partner will join him in Galveston for the grand finale, he said.

When he is finished, he said, he will head home with her and get started on "a honey-do list a mile long" before running another marathon in three weeks.

"In a way it's bittersweet," he said. "I've been fortunate to see the country on foot from Oregon to Maine, and then to do it again to see even the Deep South now. It's sad that it all comes to an end and I'll never experience America like this again."