Originally Posted by
Tourist in MSN
I do not do 45 min trips in a museum, but I wear my bike clothes in restaurants on travel days. Mostly I was talking about taking a day for sightseeing in civies. I am there to enjoy the trip, the bike is my means of travel in the outdoors, and I like camping.
Most of my tours have had all day long days of sightseeing where I did not travel to another place for the night, but my travel days are usually not spent on sightseeing either. There have been a few days where I only traveled a half day, made camp or got to the hostel, and then spent the rest of that day sightseeing, after I clean up and change to civies.
I am more likely to do 45 minute stops in museums or other points of interest. Full day stops are pretty rare for me. Most weeks there will be none. I think we took one full day on the Trans America and even on that day rode a few miles to a new camp. On the ST, I don't recall taking any days off. I did take a week in the Yosemite Valley on the SC to hike and sight see, I took a day once to just enjoy the area in Oregon, and I took a couple days in Dodge City sick as a dog debating bailing on the trip. I don't recall any bad weather days off. I had some fairly horrendous weather but typically got bored and rode by mid day any way even during a deluge. I will say that I have been lucky to have not had too many really bad weather days other than extreme heat and forest fire smoke. My luck with those has been poor. I have had a good bit of cool to cold weather, but not bad enough that I minded. I don't mind overnight sub freezing temps especially if it warms to the 50s during the day which it usually has on my tours.
I tend to spend my touring days riding every day with breaks during the day spent enjoying the scenery, taking short hikes where available, talking to the local folks or other riders, or maybe checking out touristy stuff. I do all that but the riding is central to all of it. I don't think of it as a vacation where the bike is my transportation. I think of it as a ride from point A to point B. All the good stuff along the way just automatically goes along with that.