It’s a little hard to think about riding your bike across the country when its snowing so hard outside you have to snow blow the driveway twice in 4 hours. But yet this ride crosses my mind every hour or so.

Perhaps I should share some of the plan for where and how we are going to do this thing. (Most people I tell about it say, YOU’RE GONNA DO WHAT?) So I hope it makes more sense when you learn about what we’re gonna do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In mid May of next year Deb and I plan to load our bikes and ourselves on the Empire Builder Train to Portland OR. We have reservations for a sleeper berth on the Amtrak Empire Builder. It takes about 48 hours to cross the country. From Portland we will go west even further to Astoria. We think we are going to hire a ride for that (approx 100 miles). From Astoria  we will follow the Trans Am trail down the coast to Eugene OR. The route then angles up toward Missoula Montana where the main offices of Adventure Cycling are located. https://www.adventurecycling.org/ . Then, roughly, the trail goes south east through Yellowstone and Tetons National parks and further south into Colorado where it turn directly east.  The Trans Am trail isn’t really a trail, but is a route along back roads that has been mapped out by Adventure Cycling. They make all kinds of maps just for this kind of bike travel. (approx 40,000 miles of routes in the U.S.) The maps are used a guide for bicyclists to follow and have info about water,food lodging etc on it. We still have to make our own decisions about where to go and how far to go and where to stay, but the maps help do that.

Our idea  is to stay in hotels, motels and couch surf as much as possible. There are several organizations such as Warm Showers and Air b n B that we plan to use also to find lodging. We will also take a tent and sleeping bags as back up. Many small towns have a city park or camp ground to stay in. Our budget is $100 a day for food and lodging so camping or free stays may have to enter into it if we get off budget.

We are thinking we will want to take our time doing this and stop and see the sights along the way. So we’ve planned for 120 days to get from Oregon to Virginia. I guess if you’re going to ride through Yellowstone you probably should stop and take a look for a couple of days.

Sounds so simple eh. I’m ready to ride. This is going to be a blast.  Did I mention this is 4200 miles??