If You’ve Dreamed of a Cross-Country Bike Trip, This Nearly 4,000-Mile Trail Could Make That a Reality

getpocket.com ^ | 5/8/2019 | Lyndsey Matthews

[IronJack]

I’ve got several, but my favorite is a Dura-Ace equipped Colnago with HED Jet wheels. A little aggressive for a tourer but not full race either. Racing bike is a Diamondback Podium with SRAM Red and HED Argonne +. Then I also have a Willier Blade TT machine with 10-speed Ultegra and HED Jet6 front, Jet9 rear.

But yours is one fine-looking ride!

[Berlin_Freeper]

Bicycle Thread PING!

Thanks KC_Lion and Drago!

[Sirius Lee]

My home state (CT) has a decent and actively growing rails to trails system which connects to MA, which also has a decent RtT. For the most part, they are scenic and make for a pleasant ride unless you crave hills. These are flat (rails). The only other downside is that as you approach villages one must navigate around all manner of dog walkers, children, skateboarders, and other very slow fair weather riders. But God bless them all for putting down the xbox controls and going outside.

Mostly I stick to the woods on the mt. bike, or the backroads on a carbon Roubaix. The area between the Berkshires and the Hudson is one of the most beautiful places on Earth.

And Maine is crap for bikes. You really have to watch yourself because the roads are steeply crowned and have no shoulder at all and you're sharing the road with logging trucks. Maine is for boating and fishing. The sooner you accept that the happier you will be.

[grey_whiskers]

I did that one with the Adventure Cycling Association.

Absolutely gorgeous for the first couple of days; but then the scenery doesn't change. Best part was the segment called "Route of the Hiawatha" along an abandoned railway line, going over railway trestles hundreds of feet high.

If you stop in the Town of Harrison Idaho be sure to stop at the Cycle Haus -- both coffee and beer. (I had at 10 AM beer flight with four samples.)

The town/lake of Coeur d'Alene is off-scale gorgeous, lots of good restaurants and beer. Trump Country, too.

The entire TOWN of Wallace ID (silver mining) is on the national register of historic places. There's a great micro brewery there, City Limits Brew Pub / North Mountain Bar and Grill.

[grey_whiskers]

+1. When we biked the Coeur d’Alene trail, we drove in from Spokeanne. My wife gasped as we came down the interstate into town.

[grey_whiskers]

Hey, thanks, Berlin_Freeper!

[Wonder Warthog]

""My hunch is that the Rockies might be a bit tough."

Railroad grades are quite shallow..by necessity.

[sphinx]

ABC’s Wild World of Sports used to cover an annual cross-country bicycle race. It looked absolutely grueling. How many people would really want to do this?

The related question is how many people would tackle a cross country trail in stages. Quite a few, I think. A trail like this opens up parts of the country that most people will never see. It's a little like driving across the country, avoiding interstates and high traffic roads, staying on the rural scenic routes.

I've met a couple of cross country hikers on the C&O Canal. The most ambitious was a woman who had started on the west coast three years before. She hiked in warm weather months, went home for the winter, and picked up where she had left off the next spring. The others had knocked it off in sections over a longer period.

The long distance hikers are a dime a dozen on the Appalachian Trail, but that's cross country on the short axis.

[Wonder Warthog]

"That’s what I thought of as well. Gotta set up those charging stations tho...."

Folding solar panels, or tow a bike trailer...you'd probably need that for camping supplies anyway. Ride for a day, camp and recharge for a day.

[daniel1212]

This Man Bikes the Railroad Tracks. Can he do that? With a welder, he built two ‘rail bikes’ designed to ride the coastal line.. Nerf and Anna, his wife of 44 years, met as juniors at Davis and traveled throughout California and the Pacific Northwest by rail. - http://goodtimes.sc/santa-cruz-news/man-rail-bikes/

Then there is this: https://www.themanual.com/outdoors/best-rail-bike-tours/

[IronJack]

an annual cross-country bicycle race.

I don't know about the particular race you're describing, but the World Tour races -- most famously the Tour de France -- is one of (if not THE) most demanding endurance sporting events on earth.

What's described here isn't a race though.

[IronJack]

dogs and kids.

|The banes of any trail cyclist.

[KevinB]

Well deserved for those cyclists who insist on riding on the white line, they can’t possibly ride on the PAVED SHOULDER...douches eat dust!

You and the redneck truck driver are the only douches. If you look carefully, you'll see that in most of that video there is a very small piece, perhaps a foot, of pavement outside the white. The rest of the shoulder is gravel or dirt, which is very dangerous for cyclists. Virtually all the cyclists were in that small piece of pavement outside the line. The redneck truck driver gets extra credit douche points for rolling the construction workers who were trying to improve the very road he was driving on.

[BBB333]

“Mine was about 900 miles, Hong Kong to Shanghai via back roads”

That must have been nice!

[minnesota_bound]

My cousin had a man and women stay over at his place who came from Canada and were going thru Mexico and South America down to the tip then back up again to Canada all by bicycle.
Going down was the easy part but having to pedal back UP was the hard part...