2016 Trip Planning

It's a new year and we have made some welcome upgrades to our van, solved some problems with our camper and we will be anxious to get back on the road once the weather warms up sufficiently.  So now is a good time to layout our plans for 2016.

Upon doing some preliminary research, some of the thoughts and plans that we had made at the end of last year appear to be impractical.  We had hoped to head south again in February and then cross Florida to Ft Lauderdale, where we would then head north on Adventure Cycling's Atlantic Coast route.  But in planning that part of the trip we found that the state parks to the south are already nearly 100% booked for February.  It's certainly possible that not all of those reservations will be used, and we might have luck finding campsites at more expensive private parks, but it's looking as though it wouldn't be much fun cycling that route if finding a place to stay will be a constant worry each day.

We checked state and national campgrounds north of Orlando for the same time period, and it looks as though it will be much easier to find camping sites there, though weekends can sometimes be challenging.  That makes some sense, as when we were heading south the flora changed just south of Orlando, when we started seeing citrus groves and a lot more flowering shrubs - it would seem to be the point at which the chance of frost drops considerably.  So we'll likely pick a spot north of Orlando for our departure point for our 2016 adventures, quite possibly Tomoka State Park.  Between now and then, if we have trouble getting a campsite, then when necessary our fallback plan will be to stay with Alea's sister Jean for a night or two.

We've also done some preliminary planning for establishing our likely departure date.  It's looking as though the initial leg of our planned route will be around 2,300 miles to Bar Harbor, Maine.  If we set a goal pace of 300 miles per week (a bit more than 40 miles per day), it would take us less than eight weeks to cover the distance.  Maine generally doesn't start warming up until June, so that means a departure date around the first of April will make the most sense for us.  (We could leave a bit earlier by reducing our planned mileage for the first weeks of travel.  For instance, we could leave a week earlier if we set a goal of only 200 miles per week for the first three weeks on the road.)  

So it is looking as though we'll be heading out again in late March or early April.  Leaving any sooner and we are more likely to find that we would reach some areas before local campgrounds open for the season.  

The next leg of the trip is to cut more or less diagonally across the U.S.  We're thinking we'll likely get to the end of the Natchez Trace by mid-September, which would put us on a pace to reach San Diego in early November.  But a fallback to that plan, if we get there later in the year, would be to find someplace to winter in Texas, with the thought of getting to the West Coast in the early spring of 2017.

So our initial target is to make Maine by early June.  Then, after spending the summer in the Midwest, it is possible that we could jump on the Natchez Trace by as late as mid-October or so.  If we get there that late, then we'll likely winter in Texas.  If we get there by mid-September we'll definitely continue on to California.  If we arrive on the Trace between those dates, we'll have to make a choice of whether to speed up to get through the passes in time, or slow down in anticipation of wintering in Texas.

That gives us a lot of flexibility about the pace we set during the summer.  If we plunk along at our 300 mile per week pace we should end up in Louisiana by mid-September, which would put us on track to get to San Diego at a time when the weather window is pretty optimal (before the passes freeze up in New Mexico, and after the heat in the Desert Southwest has tapered off). 

I'm currently in the process of mapping out our intended route from Florida to Maine to California, which will be reflected on the map at the top of our blog.  Our route will be shown by YELLOW DOTS and each night we intend to add the location of our campground with a RED STAR.  Which brings up an interesting point about our daily logistics.

First, we will no longer maintain our subscription to our SPOT Gen 3 GPS messaging device.  It was great for reducing our anxiety when we started traveling, but we don't feel it is all that necessary any longer.  So the van driver will no longer will have a means of seeing approximately where the bike rider is at any given time.

Second, last year we made a duplicate copy of our Adventure Cycling maps so that the bike rider had the original map and the van driver had a notebook full of copies (which took a lot of time to produce) - so that we both knew our planned route for the day.  This year's route is about twice as long as last year's, so making another full copy of all those maps is impractical (and buying a duplicate set would set us back well over $200!), and we no longer have the tools to make the copies.  

Which is why we've mapped our planned route in detail on a Google Maps page.  We should have internet coverage most everywhere we travel this year, so the van driver will use that map for each day's driving.  Just to be safe, whenever she drives Alea also plans to write out a narrative of that day's route from our Adventure Cycling map (I'll likely do that in areas where our Mi-Fi reception could be iffy and there are lots of twists and turns - mainly in hilly rural areas).

We know this year's route will be challenging in a number of areas.  In the built-up urban areas along the East Coast, the Adventure Cycling route follows bike paths that aren't paralleled by surface roads.  Add in fewer places in such areas for the van driver to park and "breadcrumb" for the bike rider, and there may be some areas that will cause a lot of stress for both of us.  It's good that we are figuring that out now, so that we can begin to strategize how to overcome those uncertainties.