How to plan your bike tour route, and how did I pick my 50,000 kilometre route?
Picking my route was probably my most enjoyable part of planning my ride. My guess is that I likely spent 100’s of hours researching this part of the bike ride. My original route was going to be at least 50,000 kilometres (31,000 miles) long. To put 50,000 kilometres into perspective, the circumference of the Earth at the equator is 40,000 kilometres (24,858 miles) around. In the end, my bike tour was on 26,000 kilometers (16,156 miles).
Resources to plan your bike tour route
So, how on earth do you plan a 50,000 kilomtre bike route? Easy; first, I bought a paper map of every single country in North, Central, and South America (including the Island of Trinidad). Then I purchased a handful of books by Lonely Planet, such as Great Adventures, A Year of Adventures, A Year of Watching Wildlife, 1000 Ultimate Sights, and 1000 Ultimate Adventures. I also purchased two other books called 1001 Natural Wonders You Must See Before You Die and The New 1000 Places To See Before You Die.
Resources to help you plan your bike route
First, I flipped through every page of these books and flagged any and everything that fell under the 24 countries I plan to visit. Then I picked a country to work on and thumb-tacked the paper map to the wall. Then, with the help of Google Maps, I cross-referenced the specific location of any flagged items that I flagged in those books. I used those small colored circular stickers to mark all the different locations on the map. I typically worked with two different colors per map. One color was for “must-see” destinations, and the second color sticker stood for “would be nice to see” destinations.
A map of Costa Rica. Red dots = must-see places / blue dots = would be nice to see, and yellow (with arrows inside them) = direction
Once I finished going through all the destinations found in my books, I turned to Google again. I would Google such phrases as – Most beautiful places in ….. or Top 10 places to visit in ……. Always cross-reference with my existing notes and Google Maps. My eyes became instantly trained for these types of articles or beautiful photos of locations whenever they came across my Facebook feed.
After sufficient research was done on a country, I would try to connect “the dots.” I would look to see if it was possible to “reasonably” connect all the “must-see” destinations, and how many “would be nice to see” destinations also lined up. For most countries, I feel like I was able to line up close to 90% of the must-see destinations, and get most of the would-be nice-to-see destinations also.
Ecuador – blue spots are places to see, and green spots are directional arrows (with a handwritten arrow)
Once completed my bike route for one country, then I would move on to the next country and so on and so forth. Most of my routing was worked on and completed in 2011-12. But I was forever finding new places thanks to the internet and Facebook and adding those places to my notes. Even after my last bike tour was over, I still collect and make notes of places I would like to see someday. I would love to bike tour Canada, the USA, and Mexico all over again, if I ever get a chance for another bike tour. At this stage, I’m pretty sure it’s wishful thinking, but I can still dream.
It should also be mentioned that there are certain countries where the routing is pretty obvious to begin with. Such as Canada, you are pretty much traveling the TransCanada Highway from St John’s, NL to Calgary, AB, for example. Other countries that were pretty straightforward were countries like Nicaragua and Panama. Once all 24 countries were completed, I would use Google Maps again to connect all my destinations to add up my kilometres per country, and then add my totals up. And that is how I got my route to 50,000 kilometres.
US Pacific Coast
For many of the countries, what highways, back roads, and country roads I plan to take would be left to yet to be determined. I don’t see that as crucial to my planning, and many of those decisions will be made in the moment. You always want to be flexible.
Other cyclists like to leave a lot of this kind of planning to chance and are intentional about avoiding the tourist “hot spots.” For me I hate the idea of missing an amazing experience or place simply because I didn’t do a little research. My classic example of this is in 2004, when I visited Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island, which was an amazing place. During my 2011 bike ride to Vancouver Island, I discovered that less than 140 kilometres (87 miles) away from Cathedral Grove were these amazing temperate rainforests out at Pacific Rim National Park. I still can’t believe I missed out on these amazing rainforests in 2004. Also, some of these tourist hot spots are hot spots for a reason.
Planning your bike route builds an amazing wave of excitement and anticipation for the greatest adventure of your life.
Additional Reading
