I walked every single street and trail in SF. Here's what I learned.

In 2011, I uprooted my life, leaving Utah and moving to San Francisco. My very first week, I walked to City Lights Books and bought a map of San Francisco.

I wanted to experience my new city like a tourist, so I set an ambitious goal of exploring every neighborhood. To keep track of my progress, I used a red pen to mark each new street on my foldable map.

On my days off from my job as a cheesemonger at Cowgirl Creamery in the Ferry Building, I’d pick a random neighborhood and spend hours exploring. I didn't just cover San Francisco’s 1,250-plus miles of streets; I went further, walking every trail in parks and open spaces like Treasure Island, Golden Gate Park, John McLaren Park, and the Presidio.

When you walk a city without a specific strategy, you often end up discovering things that you least expect. A few months before I completed my project, I started to explore Bayview and Portola, a part of the city I had spent very little time in. One afternoon after hiking down from Bayview Hill, I started to walk up Third Street and I noticed a sign for an artisan bakery (Fox and Lion Bread) and wine bar (Gratta Wines). I tried to start or end my hikes at locally owned businesses when I could, as it was always in these places where I would often end up in hour-long conversations with locals.

Gratta was one of those types of places where you quickly forget that you are even in San Francisco and you think you are at some small-town bar. As I settled into the quaint bar located in the back corner of the room, people started to ask me how I ended up there. When I mentioned my hiking project, other customers told me how happy they were that I was exploring their part of the city.

A woman began sharing her family's story about living in Bayview. Her grandparents had relocated from New Orleans, and her grandfather had worked at San Francisco's naval shipyard during the 1940s. She asked if I had walked down Quesada Avenue, and I mentioned I had just strolled down that street earlier that day. With a smile, she pulled out her phone to show me a picture of the house where she grew up. She expressed gratitude for her grandparents and loved her community. It was always rewarding to connect a San Francisco neighborhood to a specific family story and see it through someone else's eyes. I loved learning about how their ancestors came to San Francisco and the ways they helped shape our city.

Sometimes, I’d begin my hikes at 6 a.m. and walk over 20 miles until sunset. When you’re hiking more than 12 hours in one day, you have to find creative ways to keep yourself entertained. As a photographer, I often focused on a single color, capturing images of buildings or objects that featured it. San Francisco is a vibrant city, so this was easy to do. For instance, if I chose pink, I might photograph a painted Victorian house, the pink cow (Holy Cow), or even a mural of a shark with a laser beam in Bernal Heights. I would then compile these colors into collages of the city to share with friends and family.

Years ago, on the day before my 30th birthday, I hiked the last trail left on my map in Golden Gate Park. I decided to celebrate with a glass of champagne at the historic Cliff House. When I sat down at the bar, the server noticed my map and asked about it. I shared that I had just completed a six-year project hiking the entire city. She then told everyone at the bar, and before I knew it, I was receiving congratulations from numerous people. As I was getting ready to leave and pay my bill, the waitress with a huge smile on her face told me that everyone had chipped in and covered my bill.

I ended up hiking more than 1,500 miles and took more than 80,000 photographs of our beautiful city, but it was the spontaneous conversations with San Francisco natives that were the best part of this journey.