Just a normal gal taking on a big adventure. Cycling 3,659 miles over 67 days from San Francisco, CA to Topsail Beach, NC between 22 Aug and 27 Oct, 2022. "Self-supported" but with huge support from my wonderful friends and family and lovely strangers.

When I was really tired or exceptionally hungry, scared of being hit by a car (very often, especially in places where there was animosity towards cyclists) or trampled by cows, lost in a dirt track wilderness or shedding a tear or two, capturing the moment on film was not even a consideration…so this video is very much a highlight reel; the result of hundreds of moments of thinking, “this place/sunset/animal is absolutely beautiful, I need to get my phone out”.

Alzheimer's Association: https://act.alz.org/site/TR;jsessioni...

Cure Parkinson's: https://www.justgiving.com/fundraisin...


Route planning and navigation

Beeline: https://beeline.co/pages/beeline-cycling

Adventure Cycling: https://www.adventurecycling.org

Komoot: https://www.komoot.com


My route

I approximately rode Adventure Cycling's "Western Express" route from San Francisco, CA to Hanksville, UT where I had to make a detour to Moab for some bike repairs. I visited The Grand Canyon and Zion on a car round trip on two rest days. Then I dropped down to Cortez, CO and criss-crossed the Colorado/New Mexico border via Durango, Dulce, La Veta.

Once in Eastern Colorado, I rode to La Junta and then joined Adventure Cycling's "TransAmerica Trail" from Las Animas, CO to Hartville, MO. I wanted to approximately ride North Carolina's "Mountains to Sea" route so that I could see my aunts and uncles and ride through my mum's hometown of Wilson, NC so I used various apps to help me plan a route from Hartville, MO to Asheville, NC through Eastern Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee. With the exception of a few nice stretches of countryside and greenways, the route through Tennessee was quite hairy and I wouldn't recommend it.

You can check out my entire ridden route on Strava:   / strava  

Adventure Cycling's Western Express:
https://www.adventurecycling.org/rout...

Adventure Cycling's TransAmerica Trail:
https://www.adventurecycling.org/rout...

North Carolina's Mountains to Sea route:
https://www.ncdot.gov/bikeped/ncbikew....


My accommodation

I spent:

- 25 nights camping in:

- campgrounds like RJourney and KOA
- forest service/small mountain campgrounds
- city parks in Kansas and Missouri, where they let bikers camp and use bathrooms for free

- 26 nights staying at motels. I thought I would camp more but there were lots of places that didn't have campgrounds and I didn't want to just camp by the side of the road. So I would roll into a town and find the cheapest motel room they had and stay there!

- 1 night staying in a hotel because I crossed paths with my mum in La Junta, Colorado as she crossed the country by train and she treated us to that :)

- 6 nights staying with Warm Showers hosts. If you haven't heard of it before, it is like Couchsurfing but for cycle touring and it is fabulous! The hosts were always so kind and often made us a delicious dinner too. I would have stayed with more Warm Showers hosts if I could have but there weren't too many along my route

- 1 night staying with the loveliest couple that I just met on the side of the road near the Blue Ridge Parkway. My cousin and I had camped at a forest service campground the night before and were looking for a motel to stay in the next night because it was just absolutely freezing (-8 C/ +17 F with the wind chill). When we stopped to ask them about accommodation in their little town they said that we could stay at their house. Just the kindest thing and one of my trip highlights!

- 8 nights staying with family and friends. I have lots of aunts/uncles/cousins who are spread out across North Carolina so I spent all but a couple of nights with them

Great resources for finding places to stay are the AdventureCycling.org app, on which you can buy sections of their published routes and then you can see all of the places to camp/get water/food etc. and also the Warm Showers website. I never booked a motel or campground and would generally get in touch with Warm Showers hosts a day in advance... in my experience it was hard to plan and I didn't want any plans to hinder my experience of each day (which might involve detours to see the sites, long conversations/lunches with people I met, some hiding from the weather etc.). I think that lots of places in the west have policies not to turn away cyclists from campgrounds, even if full :)