[Ken Kifer's Bike Pages]
ARTICLE: My Multistate Bicycle Camping Trips
The characteristics, statistics, and a map of all my long, out-of-state bicycle trips, plus links to travelogues of those trips.
Comments | SECTIONS: | The New World | Writing | Thoreau | Home | Bike Pages |
DIRECTORIES: | Lifestyle | Commuting | Touring | Health | Advocacy | Traffic | Skills | Humor |Survey | Links |

My Multistate Bicycle Camping Trips

I made my first bicycle camping trip in 1965. On that trip and since, all of my trips have shared certain characteristics: 1) a strong tendency to start and end at my home, 2) a determined self-reliance and independence, 3) weeks of camping out, eating simple, and living on little, and 4) a focus on Nature -- the animals, the plants, the sky, the streams, the lakes, and the mountains. Some have asked me how I managed to make so many trips, but I have always felt bothered that I haven't made more.

My bicycle camping trips fall into two quite different groups: my instate trips and my multistate trips. Over two-thirds of my trips are within one state or include a little of a second state. These trips are shorter, are usually made for a different purpose than the trip itself (seeing a relative, going fishing or caving, or to reach some other destination), and were not written up or photographed. My instate camping trips have covered about 6,000 miles.

My multistate trips, on the other hand, are super vacations -- opportunities for me to vacate my usual humdrum existence and to enter a fanasty land of discovery, experience, and enjoyment. I also tend to meet a good number of cyclists on these trips, including usually more than a dozen long-distance travelers. A careful log, many photos, maps, and notes of each trip are brought back home, from which the current accounts have been written, although two trips, in 1966 and 2000, were written entirely while traveling.

The Trip Stats

My Multistate Bicycle Camping Trips Year Miles Travel Days Camp Nights
Smokies  1965 573 8 6
Ontario   Part II  1966 3,422 49 47
Spruce Pine  1971 430 11 10
Pennsylvania  1988 2,515 36 31
Colorado   Part II    Part III  1990 4,408 67 58
Seven Southern States Loop  1991 1,369 21 14
New England  1993 2,049 39 28
Ontario II  1995 2,878 41 22
Pennsylvania II  1996 2,709 46 27
Plains-Ontario Loop    Part II  1998 4,729 68 63
Eastern North American Tour II III IV V VI VII  2000 4,530 82 66
Totals for all trips
11 trips 29,112 468 372

A Map of My Long-Distance Bicycle Trips

Map of my bicycle camping trips.

This map is not to scale, and the routes were drawn freehand.  The lines on this map are too wide to show the position of the roads accurately, and I deliberately omitted some roads in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania that were too close together. This map shows only the roads covered on my multistate bicycle camping trips and does not include other roads traveled on on other rides and trips in Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Routes are in red, water is blue, traveled states and provinces are yellow, and untraveled states and provinces are in red.

Comments | SECTIONS: | The New World | Writing | Thoreau | Home | Bike Pages |
DIRECTORIES: | Lifestyle | Commuting | Touring | Health | Advocacy | Traffic | Skills | Humor |Survey | Links |
TOURING ARTICLES: | Touring | Door to Door | Travel | Camping | Camping Gear | Bags | Tent | Laptop | NE Alabama | Gears |
TOURING ARTICLES: | Maps | Weather | Cooking | Tips | Tourtypes |
TOURING TRIPS: | Long Trips | Short Trips | Smokies | Canada | Spruce | Penna | Colorado | Seven States | New England | Ontario | Penna II | Plains | ENAT |
http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/touring/trips.htm | Copyright © 2000 Ken Kifer | February 15, 2001