USA (local)

In the city of Napa, there is a friendly tourist info downtown on 1st. Stock up on food here because I haven't seen another grocery store for the rest of the day. I decided to take Silverado Road north, because unlike highway 29 it has a wide bike lane and is more scenic. There are beautiful vistas of vineyards and hills all the way. I was warned that both can be dangerous because the Napa valley is California's wine country, which means lots of drunk drivers, but I saw no evidence of that. I cut back to 29 on Bale St, and stayed in the Bothe-Napa State Park. One night costs $1 (like in all State Park campgrounds except the Bicentennial which was free), plus showers, and they never turn cyclists away.

I spent the next day and a half in the White Mountains, which were the highlight of this tour. The main east-west road through the White Mountains is route 112, called the Kancamagus highway after an Indian chief. The first half of route 112 to Lincoln is mostly flat, but the second half is moderately steep at about 9%. There are only occasional views of the valley. The pass is about 600m higher than Conway, with a vista point. (Observed there: car stops, fat lady bounces out, leaving the motor running, regards the panorama for three seconds, emits a little squeal of delight, jumps back into the car and drives off.)

Crater Lake is almost circular with a small island. There used to be a volcano there long ago, but its top blew off and left a very scenic lake. Due to its depth it is incredibly blue. In the summer (we rode in August) it is possible to ride around all around the lake; in the winter this road is closed. At the western side there is a mountain with a great view of the lake; the teaser image at the top of this page was taken there. Even in August there is snow there, and the path up the mountain is too rough to ride with road bikes.

After a day at Crater Lake, we followed highway 62 towards Medford. The ride was an exhilarating downhill through dense forest, sometimes alongside lakes or white water rivers and creeks. The area is almost completely unpopulated, and there was suprisingly little traffic (this was on a Wednesday, I expect it would be worse on weekends). We stayed one night in a campground in the Valley of the Rogue, and continued the next morning to Medford.

Although Highway 1 closely follows the coast, which means constant postcard motives to the right, it is still hilly because the cliffs vary considerably in height. They are no problem for riding because none exceeds 250 meters, and most days we didn't have more than two of these. Of course, the downside to untouched beauty is that there aren't any grocery stores to stock up on water or bananas either. The Big Sur coast is not completely devoid of human civilisation. There are small ``towns'' like Lucia (population 3 according to the Bikecentennial map) and Gorda with grocery stores and restaurants, but they are few and far in between. Stock up on food whenevr you can, and you'll love the rugged untouched beauty of this section of the Pacific coast. The picture was taken in the town of Gorda. I once ate better fish-and-chips there than in London.

Riding in Washington was easy. The roads mostly have wide shoulders and there wasn't much traffic. We had several tunnels, like the one shown in the picture. These tunnels had a button at the entrance for bicyclists to press that turns on flashing lights and warns motorists that there are bicycles in the tunnel and they might perhaps consider driving carefully. We were lucky and always had downhill tunnels, and didn't meet any logging trucks in a tunnel. A logging truck is a huge truck loaded with logs, and can be rather frightening when passing at high speed. They are more indigenous to Oregon though.

2003 we biked in Colorado. The idea was to ride the famous Colorado singletrack, biking between the places with singletrack, to see whether the Colorado singletrack is the best in the world. The question remains unanswered as we have zillions of miles of singletrack to try yet. However, one thing is clear, Colorado singletrack is fantastic. Colorado has some of the best trails in the world.

Finds bicycle shops by state and city, and shows their locations on a map.