October 28, 2011 - Continued thoughts

We know some of you may be reading this blog due to the story appearing on the Terra Trike Website. 

For serious bikers, who would consider doing such a trek, I want to share with you a few more details as to how we navigated across the country. 

Cal used the maps from Adventure Cycling on the first part of the trip - very good and very detailed.  They did tend to take out of the way routes and Cal is a more a 'point A' to 'point B' person.  Since we wanted to go through specific cities, we navigated on our own with an Atlas.  Later we used Google maps.  On Google maps, put in the destination cities/towns and click on 'bike route'.  They will use bike paths as much as possible. Google will have the printed directions, but when street signs are missing, it becomes more difficult.  Google gave good general driects, but were not full proof, such as the route they took us on through Canton, Ohio - not the best part of the city to be riding through. 

I must add, I, Rachel am a map person.  Give me a map and I will not be lost!! We did not use a GPS on this whole ride. Very important to me is a good map. We bought a DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer for each state.  These are very detailed maps. They are great for navigating country roads.  However they are not very specific for cities.  I am sure there are good city maps out there and maybe even from DeLorme, but we did not have them.  I am sure GPS would be good too.

Some States have Bike maps detailing the highways that are heavily traveled or those marked "Share the Road'.  These are helpful too.  For these maps we contacted the State's Office of Tourism on-line. As you can tell we used  all sources for navigation, as we had friends we wanted to see along the way.