The magic number for Nancy Zyburt is 56. The Michigan native is in the Virgin Islands this week on a more than a year-long road trip that she’s documenting on her blog, www.Expedition56.com.

Zyburt is working her way around to what she’s calling the 56 states and territories. Most people count five named U.S. territories these days – the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands – but if you lump all the tiny outlying possessions together, you could make that the sixth. Or, easier, count the District of Columbia.

The point is, Zyburt was born in 1956 and she is now 56 years old. She plans to travel for 56 weeks, she says. She walks 56 miles a week (seven per day) and each day she donates $56 to a worthy cause in the jurisdiction she is visiting.

Tuesday she dropped by the St. Thomas office of Catholic Charities of the Virgin Islands with two days worth of donations, marked Day 4 and Day 5 – one for the Soup Kitchen and one for Bethlehem House homeless shelter.

Food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, military-related organizations and animal causes are high on her list of charities, according to a post early on her adventure.

Zyburt says she wanted to travel for a long time and that, once her children were through school, she sold her business, a dance studio, and packed her bags. Officially she took the first step of the long journey on her 56th birthday, Sept. 1, 2012. But she started with a slight detour to see a newborn grandchild in Ohio, she says.

Nevertheless, it seems all the stars were aligned. As she noted on her blog post, there was a blue moon that day.

Despite occasional flight delays, Zyburt has stuck pretty much to schedule. She typically spends one week in each state or territory. Last week she was in Puerto Rico.