the route

By far, the greatest resource I've found for planning our ride route is adventurecycling.org. They have route maps and a ride registry where past riders report on how long they took, best and worst parts of the ride, etc.

It seems that the most popular route is the TransAmerica trail, beginning in Astoria, OR, and ending up in Yorktown, VA. I really liked the idea of riding that whole route, but it's 4247 miles, and would take a bit longer than the amount of time I have.

Fortunately there is another option. The Western Express trail starts in San Francisco, and meets up with the TransAmerica trail in Pueblo, CO. It cuts over 400 miles off the total trip.

So we are going to take the Western Express trail to Pueblo, and the TransAmerica trail the rest of the way. In total, it will be 3776 miles, according to the web site. I ordered the maps today! I'll report back on what they are like when I get them.

I think using these maps will save a LOT of planning time. I've spent some time trying to see if I could plan my own route, using Google Maps, and it's very time consuming. And really there's no way of knowing what the road conditions will be like, etc. By using these maps, I at least know that the roads are ridable. At least that's the hope.