Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Route Planning is Hard
I've been trying to plan our routes. Last night I planned all the way into Ohio. This is an interesting stretch of the country for us. Due to the number of people we know in the east, to make it our first week we figure that we'll need to get a hotel twice. That means we should be able to keep expenses very minimal. It's also a part of the country where I'm familiar with a lot of the road. I've driven more than half of it before, and even ridden some of it. But once we're past Ohio, I'm in completely unfamiliar territory.
There's this wonderful organization called the Adventure Cycling Association who publishes a set of maps that describe more than 30,000 miles of suggested bike routes around the country. These maps are made with cyclists in mind and they help point out nice places to eat, friendly bike shops, and generally use country roads without a lot of traffic. Although there isn't an East-West Adventure Cycling route near where we'll start, I had hoped to join their route as soon as possible.
But we also have a time problem. We're hoping to start our journey in the middle of June. I need to be back at work by the middle of August. Jillian isn't sure when she'll need to be back. That means we need to move pretty quickly. For example, the first section of the TransAmerica route goes from Astoria, OR (our original intended destination), to a little town called Coburg, OR, which is just outside of Eugene. This is a East to West distance of roughly 65 miles on the road. It's a North to South distance of 170 miles. If we decide to use the TransAmerica route, then when we end up in Eugene we can save an entire day by simply going due West to the ocean instead of traveling two days to Astoria. On the other hand, if we get off the TransAmerica route right out of Astoria and head straight for Missoula, we can save almost exactly 100 miles from our trip - about one day. Plus we could stay with some friends of Jillian's in Portland. But we'd be off a well traveled and thought out route. Traveling to Astoria gives us a nice section along the Columbia river. Traveling to Eugene gives us the terrain around Hell's Canyon.
And this is just at the end. There's more difficulties in Kansas and Colorado. Eastern Colorado is a long, dry place. There isn't much to stop at (at least from what I've read). If we stick along the TransAmerica route, then we start in Southeastern Kansas, go to Pueblo, Colorado, then head directly into the mountains, skipping Denver. We need to stop in Denver. Plus, we'll be coming from the Northeast corner of Kansas. Certainly between the two of those things we could shave a day off the TransAmerica route. But again, we'd need to be way off route.
So I remain unsure what to do. I'll probably carefully plot out the sections of the TransAmerica route that we're definitely riding (like Rawlins, Wyoming to Missoula, Montana). Maybe from there I'll think again about Kansas and tackling my Illinois problem.
At least I'm getting even better at geography.
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| posted at: 20:38 |
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