Dramignophyte

So I have less and less time going to my north to south tour starting in upper Michigan and I have some general maps giving supposed bike routes but I can't figure them out from the graphic to google maps. I see all kinds of advice on which equipment to use, but I can't seem to find any good advice on figuring out a long distance route, besides that you need to have a good map. I was wondering if anyone knew of any detailed routes, or ways to figure them out.

Google maps can only seem to figure out routes that would likely get me killed. One thing I want to do is avoid any big cities. I want to camp the vast majority of my nights and it seems like massive areas are nothing but farm land for days without two sticks to rub together.

Any advice on figuring out routes would be amazing! I'm starting in upper michigan and ending around florida. The starting point and ending point has plenty of wiggle room, I'm going to be dropped off a ways in to get started.

saddlesores

check crzyguy for route reports: crazyguyonabike.com: Bicycle Touring: A place for bicycle tourists and their journals

Paul Barnard

I am interested in seeing what others have to say. Choosing a safe route is a challenge if you have never seen the roads or know the local travel conditions.

boomhauer

The best plan is to get a general idea. Don't make it too detailed. Just avoid the towns larger than 3000 people.
You will change your route so often there isn't much point in trying to figure out every turn. Just get a general idea and only plan the details one or two days in advance.
i have had luck going from reservoir to reservoir. They usually have camping and trees to hide out if stealth camping. River bottoms are good for this too.
With me the first day is hardest. Trying to leave an urban area and finding a place to sleep causes a lot of worry.

hueyhoolihan

if i was going to do it, i would...

take the ACA Northern Lakes route (it runs north/south through the lower peninsula) to Monroeville In. then take the ACA Northern Tier route East to Orchard Park N.Y. (a suburb of Buffalo, N.Y.).

then take the Erie Canal bike path to Albany N.Y. then use this to bike along the Hudson River to Poughkeepsie, N.Y. and finally, take the ACA Atlantic Coast route all the way to Florida.

alternatively, at the cost of some distance, from Buffalo you can skip the Erie Canal and Hudson river route and continue on the ACA Northern Tier route to Bar Harbor, Me. and catch the ACA Atlantic Coast route to Florida from there.

ACA is Adventure Cycling Association. they have a website. the maps cost a few bucks and have a detailed legend on them that contain camping places, among other things, along the way. an incidental cost, IMO.

whatever way you go, good luck.

jkmartin

I'd start with the bicycle maps the state puts out:

https://www.michigan.gov/mdot/0,1607...6053--,00.html

I've always found it best to pick an intermediate destination and work backwards to your start location. Then forward to your end destination keeping in mind miles/day, availability of food and water, what you want to see, and where you want to stay.

You can also use the Strava heat map to find where people are already riding and stitch together a route that way.

https://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#7/-8...7912/blue/bike

Google Streetview gives the best representation of the condition of the actual road and can help you judge traffic volume. I haven't had good luck using the bicycling option with Google Map directions, but if you trace your route into Google Maps or ridewithgps.com you can get elevation profiles and cumulative elevation loss/gain. I really like ridewithgps.com because it allows you to create a route then export it to your GPS, phone, or whatever. If you do use ridewithgps.com I recommend saving each day as a separate route. Ridewithgps.com also allows you to search for routes others have already mapped out in a certain area.

The MI state bicycle maps seem to include basic services (food, lodging, camping). You can also find these things by zooming in on an area in Google Maps and putting "camping" or "hotel motel" in the search bar.

It can be a very time consuming process. Over the winter I spent about 100 hours planning a 2000 mile ride that all got scrapped when my furnace died. That was before I started using the Strava heat map. If I had the Strava heat map at the beginning it probably would have taken 30 hours.

EDIT: Didn't realize your ride isn't confined to Michigan. If a state doesn't have a bicycle specific map you can look at traffic count maps to get an idea on volume. Unfortunately the state maps usually only cover state highways and not paved county roads that may be better suited to bicycling. Since your route is much longer than I thought you're going to have to do intermediate destination planning more times and have your "end" destination be a rest day.

Machka 

Point your bicycle toward Florida ... and start riding.

Really ... don't get all worked up about routes and things. Just go with the flow.


However, just to help yourself along a bit, pick up some road maps from your local tourist info centre, from service stations, bookstores, sporting goods stores, or wherever you can find them.

Get two or three of your local area/state, and use them to do ever-increasing distances as training rides. That will help familiarise you with what to expect ... to connect what you see on the map, with what you see in real life. And then use that information as you go.

Dramignophyte

Man, these responses are great! thank you so much!

Jseis 

When I rode across North America with friends in '76, we deliberately stayed away from the Bike America route to maintain our own novelty and made up our route on the fly. Was a blast though parts were nuts. Roads, tunnels, bridges weren't too bike friendly but the people were nice. A route can be made up of 60 mile sections which is easy to cover in a day and leaves time for all else. I found that once you get over 70-80 miles a day, it's more about riding than touring. Not unusual for tour riders to average 10-12 mph.

Doug64

+1 Look at places you would like to visit on your ride and just "connect the dots. My wife and I started a 3 month tour with only the first day planned, and that changed when we were buying ferry tickets at the start. The guy in the ferry terminal showed us a better route. We knew what cities and countries we wanted to see, and looked for roads going the way we wanted to go.

+1
Wild camping is a little more challenging on the east coast. You may be better planning to use RV parks, city parks and public campgrounds. Even that got challenging at times. riding through the larger towns is not a big deal. However, navigating large cities is a time and energy sink, and that alone may be reason to avoid them.

Getting to the Lower Peninsula will also be a little challenging. You can't ride over the Mackinaw Bridge, but I believe there is a shuttle. We did a loop from Detroit to Mackinaw City and then took Lake Michigan down the west side before heading east back to Detroit. During that trip we changed from circumnavigating Lake Erie to circumnavigating Lake Huron to a loop around Michigan; right at a 1000 miles. It was all weather related. We did get as far north as Mackinaw City which was our decision point.

I agree about not over planning, especially if you have some flexibility with time.

bikenh

A+. The best idea of the bunch so far.

One thing to remember, unless you plan to go into northern PA you will have to cross the Ohio River which means pretty much you will have to go through a big city. No way around it unless you go into northern PA and then drop south. You have that simple problem anytime you get around a major river, all the bridges are around the big cities.

What do you want to see and what don't you want to see. Plan accordingly. I always design my own routes and never use a predesigned route. Granted I've gotten myself into the challenge to seeing how many counties I can ride through so I'm always using a new route even though my start and destination point are generally the same. It's amazing the number of different ways you can get from point A to point B.

To avoid the heaviest travelled roads you can try two different options. Watch the time of day/day of the week that you are travelling on the road...it can make a world of a difference. Also as you look at the map, generally go for 3 digit highways and make to stick with state highways. Granted I know US127 through NW Ohio is traffic tame but then it takes you right into Cincinnati to cross the Ohio River. Definitely avoid two digit US highways(US20/US30/US40) as they will have a lot more traffic. Granted that isn't a hard fast rule. I know I've ridden US40 through MD-OH River last year and had very little traffic and road US50, 4 lane road through western WV and it had very little traffic as well. I fess I'm use to riding with tons of traffic so it doesn't really bother me any. Time of day can make a real difference as to how much traffic you see on any given stretch of road. I illegally, unwhittingly/unknowingly, rode across the US40 bridge across Susquehanna River last summer about 10AM on Saturday morning. I had maybe 10-12 cars go by me as I was on the bridge. On a weekday morning/5PM time frame, it would another story altogether.

Walter S

Make the best guess you can but when you get out there and find your planned highway is a real busy four lane with no trees and no shoulder just take the next turn (or turn around). Then glance at a map and make sure you're not going down a road that dead ends at a pasture after two miles, and has a somewhat reasonable compass direction.

Don't travel on a schedule if you can avoid it and if you can't then pad it out liberally. Then whatever comes up, you adapt and find a promising path forward and don't sweat it.

Remember that you're not trying to get somewhere. You're trying to go somewhere.

MichaelW

Identify
any 'must-ride" pinchpoints (eg bridge, ferry)
any "Must-Not-Ride" places to avoid
any Must-See (biggest ball of baling twine in the world kind of thing)
Pick some small/medium sized towns where you can resupply.
Pick your way along the remaining routes in your general direction, tweaking the route and distance as you please.

mstateglfr 

Google maps sends you to places you may get killed, but you can override the route and change it however you like.
Just click and drag to change the route. You can avoid all the death points.

hueyhoolihan

even taken out of context, that's a comforting thought!

Dahon.Steve

+1

It takes quality time to create a safe route. Since I use a combination of two software products, Garmin Mapsource and Google, it would take me about 35 hours to construct a 2000 mile route. Maybe double that if I wanted to incorporate camping locations, motels and stores into the route. I find it gets easier with practice.

Also, Google comfirms what the Garmin software already tells you on the speed of the road. As you zoom out of Mapsouce, the thick yellow roads that remain on the screne will be a fast highway or expressway. The trick is to zoom in and make routes of the smaller roads.

FBinNY 

I start by laying out the basic route based on terrain, major cities to avoid, and places i want to visit. Since you're well west of the east coast cities, your main concerns are where and when to cross the key mtn ranges. If you look at the big picture, moving south through Michigan and Western Ohio, works fine, but then you have central Kentucky which feeds you directly to the highest parts of Tennessee, and Georgia, so you have the first major decision.

Move east through West Virginia, and PA then turn sough on the eastern slopes of the Alleghenies, then following the Atlantic coast to Fla. Or bear west staying west of Nashville, down through Alabama, then following the gulf coast to Florida. Unless you like hills and sharing crowded crowded roads through passes, stay clear of the straight line through eastern Tenn and western GA. (I'm biased, but I'd take the eastern route, passing between Pittsburgh and Columbus, then moving into the Cumberland gap to slide to the eastern slopes in VA.

Once you have the big picture down, then look at where you'll be riding, and think about blocking out then time, and places to visit or spend the night (very roughly). When you're down to actually looking at roads, I find Rand McNally maps far more predictive of what roads will be like than anything else. Combine with Google you should be able to block out a good working general idea, and start out making adjustments based on what you learn along the way.

Machka 

I'd rather spend those 35 hours cycling around my local area in preparation for the tour.

Once on the tour, I can spend a few minutes sorting out where I want to go each day. The route takes care of itself on the go.

staehpj1

A few possibilities...

1. Use Adventure Cycling routes if you want a planned route and are frustrated with making your own.
2. Just have a general idea of where you want to go and wing it.
3. Bite the bullet and plan an exact route. Google maps can work well, but you may want to pick and choose rather than just letting it create the route. Street view helps a lot if you go this route. Car directions with "avoid highways" checked can sometimes work better than bike directions.
4. Use some combination of items 1-3.

Not as true nearer the coasts but in the middle of the country very small towns tend to have parks or picnic areas that you will generally be left alone if you pitch a tent for the night. Getting permission to camp in other spots or finding places to camp where no one minds is usually possible as well. In that part of the country, I doubt that you will ever be more than 40 or 50 miles without seeing a small town. I always found that the more rural/small town it is the easier it is to camp unless you insist on camping in camp grounds (which are seldom my first choice if other options are available).

fietsbob

I liked Visiting The excellent collections in the University's Geography Department Map Library..

Dahon.Steve

Adventure Cycling listed the routes for free. I suspect the maps have additional information like camping grounds but the physical routes can be copied into a GPS or paper map. I'm surprised they posted them for the general public.

Interactive Network Map | Adventure Cycling Association

rm -rf

There's at least five crossings between Louisville and Portsmouth OH that are rural or near small towns. Madison IN; near Warsaw KY; near Maysville KY; Portsmouth OH. And the best one, the ferry at Augusta KY, free for bike riders. Madison, Augusta, and Maysville are each worth visiting--historic river towns tucked between the river and the high bluffs.

(And there's a few routes through Cincinnati that would be on great cycling roads all the way through. But that takes more work to plan than staying rural.)

The KY side of these crossings has a lot of short, steep hills. I like to find roads following streams to reduce the number of climbs.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'll mention ridewithgps.com again, like the above posts. For rough planning, I use google maps with Terrain View turned on. Zoomed in, it shows contour lines at 40 feet, with darker lines at 200 feet. Then ridewithgps shows me the grades on the hills as I draw the route. Undo/Redo makes it easy to back up and try a different route. It has the Street View orange guy icon, to check out the road conditions.