How long biking across america

Was this helpful? If so, please consider sharing so it can help other explorers too:. Helpful article. Wish I would have seen something like this a few years ago. I did the Trans America about 7 years ago. Loved seeing small town America and the backroads scenery. Overall met many kind, friendly people and enjoyed myself immensely. Thanks for your articles, you are a wonderful resource. Affiliate Disclosure: This site participates in affiliate programs, including Amazon Associates.

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I only recommend and link to products I know and love. Thanks for reading! If keeping traffic-related risk low is a top priority for you, consider these alternatives: Bike Nonstop US : This route was first created for a self-supported race in , with the goal of crossing the US using as many miles of rail trails and backroads as possible.

Designing Your Own Route Can you create your own route? Snow on the Bike Nonstop US route even in summer — imagine what winter would be like! High-visibility flags and vests, reflective patches, and multiple flashing tail lights are all great. A helmet mirror I love this one from Bike Peddler is essential in my opinion.

A clear and confident riding style goes a long way. These tips will help. Depending on where you are, camping options might include: Established campgrounds: pay a fee and get access to amenities like bathrooms and sometimes showers. Reservations sometimes required in advance. Primitive campgrounds: often found in the Rockies and westward, these primitive sites may or may not have bathrooms or water.

RV parks: in small towns sometimes the RV park is happy to have bicycle travelers pitch a tent for the night Town parks: In small towns, especially along well-established routes, you may be able to pitch your tent at the town park. Appreciate Local Hosts For cyclists eager to spend time with locals while also keeping costs down, staying with local hosts is an ideal option.

On well-established routes you might even find occasional free treats, like here along the GAP trail. The lovely folks at Service Creek, Oregon — a few of the many kind people I met while bike touring in the US When you bicycle across the United States, you experience this diverse and complicated place in all its glory and challenges.

Is it safe to bicycle across the US? Is wild camping allowed in the US? After all, nothing can really prepare you for that first big bike journey, and all those little revelations along the way are the foundations of a true adventure. Available in three sizes: 2. If you have an extra strap or rope, attach it under your saddle. Available in road and mountain sizes, both front and rear. Keep all your essentials—water, phone, chapstick, camera, snacks—accessible as you ride. It was summer when I left the West Coast on my first cross-country bike tour , and I was a kid from Kansas.

I imagined long days at peak humidity and sticky, mosquito-embattled nights. I had no idea how bitterly cold it could get at night at elevation—and how much time I would spend every morning unthawing my water bottles over a camp stove.

In the mountains, my sleeping bag, a flat fold of polyester better suited to preteen slumber parties, was no warmer than sleeping in a paper bag. The minute I reached a town big enough to have an REI, I blew half my touring fund on a nice, lightweight mummy bag I still use to this day. Our favorite lightweight and packable sleeping bag, rated for chilly nights down to 30 degrees F. Packs down small enough to take on a bike, plus it fits two people, so you can split the cost with your travel buddy.

I gambled so many times that the single store I needed for a restock would be open— and lost —that I learned to carry far more food than anyone could eat in 48 hours at all times. Do I really need to elaborate on this one?

Write this stuff down! So many friends and family members warned me that cross-country cycling would be dangerous that I started to wonder if they might be on to something. But ultimately what I discovered is that the vast majority of people—in both cities and the small-town , rural areas I spent the majority of my time passing through—were trusting, open-hearted, and kind.

As we approached the summit, I pedaled around every bend in anticipation of the Cedar Breaks sign. Finally, the words Cedar Breaks were in view, just a couple hundred feet more. Jason and John were already at the top. I propped my bike beside theirs and wandered behind the sign to finally satisfy my curiosity. There it was, the gift, four ice-cold Dos Equis beers to reward us for the hard work.

A round of beers from a stranger is always a great gesture, but when it comes at the top of a mountain, with no bars for tens of miles, it is something special. We cracked open the gifts and sat on the sign listening to music, dancing as cars drove by.

The tough miles were behind us, and we enjoyed the mile descent into the city through a beautiful canyon. During their ride to the Nevada Stateline, they experienced their longest time without service.

They had to bike 84 miles on Route 50, known as the loneliest road in America. Route 50 took them across the Utah border into Nevada.

The ride had four 1, ft summits and it took them nine hours to complete. Chris says, "Biking into Baker, Nevada, I had a deep feeling of discomfort. On top of the usual pain and soreness of my legs, something felt wrong in my gut. The wind picked up by the end of the ride, and dust was blowing through the one street of this town. There was not a soul around, just the howling of the wind and associated chimes of clanking metal.

The gas station I saw on google had no convenience store attached. The restaurant I passed was closed, and the grocery store across the street appeared to have not been open for years.

A sign pointed to a cafe 10 miles south. Not going to make it. Finally, at the edge of town, there was hope. The word 'espresso' was scrolled into a sign pointing right. There was a tiny shack, no more than 50 square feet, with one occupant.

The sliding window cracked open as I approached. The two picnic tables adjacent to the shack were uninhabitable, baking in the midday sun. I sat in the dirt with my back pressed against the neighboring building for shade, shielding my eyes from the dust that picked up with every gust. This was a low for me. For the next few hours, we all laid on the porch of the one restaurant in town, waiting for its doors to open. It was the people we met at the restaurant later that day that reinvigorated my passion for this journey.

We met a delightful couple by the names of James and Suzanne who bought us our dinner that night, and everyone at the small bar and grill listened in and asked questions about our journey.

With time, that dreadful physical and emotional feeling ran its course, and I was back in good spirits to finish the section. Free hospitality exchange is alive and well in the bike-touring community. I first signed up on the Warmshowers network as a host in my home city, taking in three foreign cyclists the summer before my own ride. Then it was my turn. I spent a total of 11 nights with 10 different Warmshowers hosts, each of them adding something very unique and local to the journey.

On top of that, small-town America showed me its warm hospitality in a fantastic mix of other ways. Cyclists like myself can often find shelter in the community centers of churches.

I overnighted in eight different churches on my ride. I stayed in two different fire stations. Towns on busy bike routes like the TransAmerica will often open their parks to cyclists as a place to camp. I stayed in hostels and hotels for 11 of the 75 nights of the ride, but I never made a hotel or campsite reservation more than a day or two in advance.

I learned to let go, stay spontaneous, and trust that the route would accommodate me. And it did. Photo: J. With very little exception, I had daily access to gas stations and convenience stores.

Dollar stores are proliferating in rural America at an astounding rate; I could count seeing on a Dollar General in nearly every town. I was never short on food or water. A little harder to find were laundry and showers, but it never got down to the point of uncomfortable stink. Between swimming pools, Warmshowers hosts, and the occasional hostel or hotel, I stayed surprisingly groomed — compared, at least, to the through-hikers I crossed on the Appalachian Trail.

Humans are built to migrate across long distances. Pushing pixels at my sedentary job last year, I started to hear that primal urge to muscle myself across a vast distance. I had gotten a taste for it on multi-day backpacking trips and shorter, supported bike trips. At the end of four days of cycling across Colorado with friends in , I felt so alive and so strong that I wanted more.

I started imagining a way to keep going, to live on my bike for a whole season and cross an entire continent. The raw physicality of a bike tour is a reminder that our human bodies crave movement and endurance.

Inhabiting my body in that way — pacing myself, watching the sky for weather, navigating around landforms — felt so natural, like answering a primeval call. The logistics of self-supported bike touring daunt some people.

I was often asked how I was transporting my bike and all my gear to the starting point and back from the endpoint. I had road-tripped with my sister to the starting point in Oregon with my disassembled bike in the cartop carrier of her Prius.