So my first post on this blog served to outline my purposes and educational goals. This post will give a few more details, particularly for those of you who are, ahem, going to join me. You know who you are 😉

An actual itinerary with more specific dates is dependent on the upcoming arrival of my route maps from Adventure Cycling Association. So far, this is what I know about my journey on the Sierra Cascades Route:

Overall, I have 70 days with 53 days biking at a minimum, which averages to 65 miles per biking day. I’ll be trying to keep lodging cheap, using WarmShowers (a biker’s Couch Surfing) and camping. No hostels or hotels for this teacher gal. I’ll take roughly 1 rest day per week, with an occasional extra. Except for my flight date, all dates below are approximations.

I’m flying out of Bozeman and into San Diego on June 13th. My bike will be traveling via BikeFlights.com. I’ll need to pick it up when I get into town. That first day, I’ll hang out in the city exploring and getting my gear in order and then I’ll bike to the border at Tecate to really get things underway. The rest of June and the first week of July will be spent in California traveling North visiting places like Sequoia National Forest, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Lassen Volcanic, and Mt. Shasta.

Oregon gets 9 days, roughly July 9-18, staying in the National Forests in the center of the state past Crater Lake and Mt. Hood. Then I’m going to switch trails to go through Portland and over to the ocean and connecting to the Washington Parks route.

Washington gets 14 days, the last two weeks in July and a bit of August.  I’ll visit Olympic and North Cascades National Park, plus there’ll be a ferry ride in there somewhere. As a landlubber, the idea of traveling by ferry is strangely exciting to me, though it’ll probably make me motion sick.  I’ll jump to the Canadian border at Sumas before joining the Northern Tier trail to head back towards Montana. Canada!

Idaho and Montana get another 14-16 days in the middle two weeks of August (at least it’s not the desert!). I’ll be visiting Glacier, staying with my parents in Kalispell for a day or two, then stopping by Adventure Cycling’s headquarters in Missoula before finishing in Bozeman just in time to set up my classroom and start another year of teaching. My estimated finish date is Aug 22nd.

(An exciting incentive: we can avoid most of the summer’s presidential election hype. It’s gonna be huge! We’ll feel the bern as we unleash the American dream!)

Photo Credit: White House

Photo Credit: Voice of America