Originally Posted by
Tony Marley
Where do you want to start, and where do you want to finish up? Obviously makes a difference in the route and distance.
Agreed. I think you can make a variety of different routes work pretty well, and depends a bit on where you want to travel.
I've gone across three times and once across Canada:
-- 1992: "Portland to Portland", though I started at the coast near Astoria. I went up the Columbia River Gorge, across to Lolo Pass and then across to the Twin Cities. I stayed in the US by going by way of the UP and then south of the Great Lakes and across New England to Portland.
-- 2001: San Jose to Jacksonville. Mostly on Adventure Cycling Southern Tier
-- 2002-2004: Sequence of eight one week trips: San Jose to Reno, Reno to Salt Lake City, Salt Lake City to Fort Collins, Fort Collins to Wichita, Wichita to Memphis, Memphis to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Pittsburgh
A few general thoughts related to this:
1. Going in the summer doesn't make sense to do a Southern Tier, so more across the middle or northern US. I went West to East, but you'll want to work constraints on snowpack in western passes and potential hot/humid if you go too far south in later summer. Depending on timing/route an east to west might make more sense.
2. The Adventure Cycling route is nice for meeting others along the way, as well as knowing services. Because you have SAG support, both might become not as big of an issue.
3. I approached things a bit different between Western US and Eastern US:
- In the West, I tended to follow major US highway routes. There weren't as many choices and I could make most any of them work.
- In the East, there are more choices and I found myself working a bit more to find smaller roads but still going direct. This was also where Adventure Cycling or similar routes were sometimes helpful
4. The biggest factor affecting my routes were really some of the places I wanted to go along the way, as well as some artificial constraints like staying in the US, etc.