walk cycle
 

I have not done a whole lot of animation but I know how to get a walk cycle going but I don't know how to make the character walk across the scene. I tried the graph editor once from a Maya 6 foundation book but did not really understand how to use it. Is there a easier way. For instance could you use a motion path to make the character walk across the scene and loop the walk cycle.

how you get your character walking across the scene depends on how you set it up. Usually you would have a control object or a group under which your character is parented.
Yes you can look cycles using the trax editor