Coast to Coast 2023

7/26/23 If you lose faith is humanity, I’d recommend biking across the country. Its amazing how kind strangers are when you’re on a two wheeled adventure… This morning we quickly packed up camp at Sutter’s Recreation Area in North Branch, MI. Great spot but there were so many mosquitoes. And then we took off for Algonac. Last full day in Michigan! The morning was largely uneventful, except for the 17mph headwind we fought about half of the time. So after about 30 miles we stopped in the town of Yale! All I wanted was an iced coffee and a pastry. Fortunately, there was a cute little bakery that has just that. Unfortunately, we were a day early for Yale’s Bologna Festival, apparently its a big deal.  As we continued on, the dark, hazy sky grew more and more ominous. The air quality was poor and the clouds ahead looked dark. We stopped for a lunch at a picnic table outside a run down general store. And then, we started to get the weather alerts. Throughout the rest of the day, we got ...

 Day 49: 7/25/2023 I’m going to preface this by saying that we know not every day can be sunshine, rainbows, and butterflies (the butterflies gets an asterisk though because we very often do eat gummy butterflies). Today was one of those days where we knew we might not have a lot of fun, and that was just going to be the way the cookie crumbled. We did start off on a good note though with breakfast at our warmshowers consisting of fruit and local eggs with toast. We set off slightly later than we hoped but ended up making up some time by not taking many breaks in the morning. We stopped at a bicycle shop for Liz to get some new tires- she has had a few flats and the tread was really worn so thought it best to swap them out- and at a grocery store for a quick restock in Bay City. Interesting place. Don’t know if i would recommend especially considering we couldn’t decide if the smell of the town was closer to a dirty bathroom or wet garbage. If you have read this far and are from Ba...

 July 24th : Le Roy to Midland  The worst part about getting ready in the morning after setting up camp in the rain and sleeping out in the rain is probably the way that dirt and sand is stuck to everything. It is just nearly impossible to keep anything clean. But despite this struggle we managed to get ourselves up and going. We packed away our soggy wet tents along with our wet rain gear, and for me, all the wet clothes I had used to try to dry out the inside of my tent last night, since that was a bit of a disaster.  Once we started biking I was feeling surprisingly good, my legs were feeling strong and I was enjoying working on pedaling faster and keeping my momentum up. I was also excited to get to the home of our warm showers hosts to dry out all of my belongings. I had also been told that there would be curry and that sounded amazing. After about 10 miles on back roads we arrived in the town of Evart, which had a very foul smell to it, and got back onto the bike pa...

  7/23/20 Alden to LeRoy MI This morning, we packed up quickly and quietly knowing we had a lot of miles to do. I was sad to leave family and Torch Lake. I am so grateful for my aunt and uncle who let us stay in their home, fed us, drove us around, and more. Our rest day yesterday had reminded me of the joy in spending summer days by a lake. But we have to keep making our way back home!  I spent the morning talking to people on the phone to avoid thinking about the miles I had to bike. At one point, Keelin and I missed a turn, but we met back up with Kayla easily.  We stopped for lunch by the water in Lake City and watched as a thunderstorm moved in. We waited out the worst of the rain, but then pushed on. The rest of the day we had on and off rain. After Cadillac, we ended up on a pretty much empty bike path which is always more enjoyable than the roads.  We decided to head to a campground further east instead of our original plan to go south. As we started to set u...

 Day 46: 7/22/2023 I seem to be having the pleasure of writing about all of our rest days recently and I’m not complaining! Today we spent the day at the beautiful Torch Lake with Liz’s family. It was so incredible to be met with such hospitality once again. We woke up somewhere around 9 and leisurely rolled out of bed to congregate in the living room. The only “errand” we didn’t get the chance to do yesterday was route plan. We put our brains together for a few minutes and before long we had our next 5 days sorted out! We wandered into the kitchen and found the most heavenly cinnamon streusel bread imaginable (from costco apparently). Around 11 am Liz’s aunt and uncle came into the cabin we were staying in and we all got ready to go for a nice paddle on one of the nearby lakes. It was so nice to be on the water and using some different muscles for a change. As I was in the kayak paddling around I kept think how grateful I was to be spending our rest day here! After paddling we had...

July 21st : Petoskey to Torch Lake  The day before a rest day is always a great day! Well okay maybe not always, there was that day before Bismarck, ND that was pretty rough… as we’ve established it is not true that it doesn’t matter what happens on the day before a rest day, but luckily today was pretty perfect!  The day started with muffins and granola bars for breakfast, since we are still out of propane. While the muffins had looked great yesterday when we bought them on Mackinac island, they had undergone a significant amount of jostling in their journey on our bikes, which meant they required a spoon to eat, but that was alright.  From Petoskey state park to the edge of the town of Charlevoix we followed a lovely bike path with views of Lake Michigan. Unfortunately the path had been washed out in one section and we had been ignoring the signs warning us of the closure. This left us to backtrack about 1/2 a mile, but it wasn’t too much trouble. As we were getting int...

  7/20/23 (To preface: In order to get from the UP to the LP of Michigan, we had to take a ferry from St. Ignace to Mackinac Island, and then another ferry from Mackinac Island to Mackinaw City. Mackinac Bridge does not allow bikes, but you can pay someone to drive you over. Mackinac Island does not allow motor vehicles so it is full of bikes and horse drawn carriages.) Spirits were not high when we woke this morning at 5:45am to more rain. It had rained all night long and looked like it would continue all day, our tents were very wet. We were so excited for today, would it be too rainy to enjoy the sights? We considered our options 1. take the ferry and then bike 60ish miles to the campground in Petoskey (the original plan), 2. take the ferry and stay in Mackinaw City to shelter from rain, 3. say screw it, get a hotel in St. Ignace, and bike tomorrow. We decided to get to the ferry terminal and then go from there.  At the ferry terminal, the dock master was so excited to hear...

 Day 43: 7/19/2023 Manistique, MI to Saint Ignase, MI Liz and Kayla seemed to sleep better than me last night since I was woken up at 3:30 in the morning to the family at the campsite next door leaving for their morning fishing trip. The added anxiety came from the fact that I initially thought they were strangers stealing our bikes. We ran into Andre again in the morning and he was keen to take a photo and a selfie for his instagram… he also wanted to send us the photos through direct message but didn’t know how to work the app. He handed Liz his phone and said can you show me… Liz was so prepared to help out except for the fact that all the words on the screen were in german !!! They used Andres german skills and Liz’s instagram navigating as a joint effort to send the photos, and it worked!!  We then started biking… on route 2 all day today. We knew it was going to be one of those head down and pedal days so we decided to try and give ourselves 15 mile pick-me-ups. We stopp...

7/18/22: Escanaba to Manistique  This morning my alarm went off at 6:30am, the typical time, but instead of getting up we all just continued to lay in our bunk beds in the RV we were sleeping in. I was way to cozy to move and I was waiting for someone else to make the first move, but no one was. Eventually I rolled over and looked at Keelin and said what we all knew but didn’t want to accept yet, “we have to get up”. After we got up the morning consisted of our usual routine, but with coffee and homemade berry oatmeal bake and yogurt instead of Quaker instant oats, which was pretty great. By 8:30 we were saying our goodbyes to our hosts and setting off. With only 55 miles to bike we knew we would have time to spare today, so we planned to make a stop 12 miles away in Gladstone, MI to take care of some errands. We followed a bike path there and got some of our first views of Lake Michigan, which was quite spectacular, it really feels like an ocean. Gladstone turned out to be a very ...

7/17/21 I woke up this morning and peaked out of my tent to see the beautiful lake we were camped next to. I was so happy we got a campsite right next to the water last night. Opening my tent to a beautiful view is the best feeling. As we got ready, we talked about what we looked forward for our warm showers tonight. I was excited about a home cooked meal and reminisced about the veggie lasagna we had at our first warm showers.  After packing up, eating protein oats, and filling water bottles with a pump, we left our campsite on time! (Only took us 40 days to figure that out.) We stopped at a community center/ post office in Felch and multiple people stopped to see what we are up to. I think it is so fun to see peoples reactions when we say were biking from WA to CT. Our next stop was at Da Hardwood Store (a cute general store with a cute dog) where we picked up a second lunch because we were all still ravenous from yesterday. We then ate our pbjs and cheese sandwiches behind a clo...

 Day 40: 7/16/2023 Conover, WI to Crystal Falls, MI Today we left Wisconsin!!! We woke up in the morning and were very pleased with ourselves leaving EXACTLY at 8 am (our scheduled departure… usually we are a few minutes late at least). We got on the road and found today to be very scenic. Honestly was a pretty uneventful day except for the fact that we stopped at a coffee shop and when we emerged the sky was all of a sudden dark and stormy. No bueno. Potentially one of my least favorite things about biking across the country has been the rain.  We then ended up on some janky bike paths with some broken down bridges and lots of roots causing bumps. It’s the type of thing where you enter the bike path in the woods and pray that you’re actually going to emerge somewhere helpful. Good thing Kayla’s garmin can guarantee that for us because the path was not instilling confidence. Thankfully the next one we got one was much better. Then a man stopped us and told us about a third bik...

Napoleon 2 Gackle Hey it’s Rogan! Today was a really chill day as it was 39 miles with the wind at our backs for most of it. We left our cute little campsite in Napoleon, but not before stopping at an amazing coffee shop to fuel up. The ride was thankfully quite uneventful and we were done and in our destination of the amazing town of Gackle. There, we stayed at the Honey Hub Hostel, which is a must stay for being biking across the country. The person who runs it is deeply tied to the biking community, being that his father co-founded Honey Stingers and all! (Rogan from the future here: the day after we left we ate almost all of our supply of the free samples they gave us). We had a lot of chilling, resting, and talking to new bikers we haven’t crossed paths yet. It was an amazing stay and very needed as we prepare for the hundred mile day ahead of us tomorrow… See y’all soon! :0

Claire here. We woke up feeling so rested today, and SO excited for the continental breakfast included in our hotel stay :). I myself had waffles and an entire plate of scrambled eggs, then took more waffles and muffins to go of course. We the checked out and set off on our 73 mile day to Napoleon. We were happily surprised to find a bike path that took us from near the center of town to completely out of city limits, to some beautiful farmland just south of Bismarck. Apart from one tough hill in the very beginning, I'd go as far as to say that we may have had one of the most perfect mornings. We transitioned from bike path to BRAND NEW pavement with almost no cars. It felt like a dream. As if that weren't lovely enough, we were lucky enough to snag some tail winds in the afternoon, after stopping for lunch as a gas station/hardware store/restaurant/convenience store in Hazelton. We've grown quite fond of these types of establishments that are all too common out here. The a...

Today is finally our rest day!!! Lord knows we needed it- its been 2 weeks since our last. We treated ourselves to a hotel in Bismark, where I woke up to breakfast in bed because I slept through the continental breakfast. Fortunately my teammates are the best and brought me waffles! We watched some Hallmark movie on the hotel TV and I’m pretty sure I went back to sleep after. I took this rest day very seriously. It was then when Olivia casually mentioned she was popping into urgent care across the street to get a spider bite checked out. She came back an hour later with wide eyes and some news. The spider bite on her arm was actually MRSA. Yup, we didn’t expect that curveball either. She is thankfully doing better now, with the area healing due to a pretty heavy course of antibiotics. But she is a tough one!! After we all panicked, we went to urgent care as well to get checked out and were cleared by the doc. We threw everything we owned into the wash, sanitized the rooms, and ran some...

We woke up this morning looking forward to finally getting to a town with a population size bigger than 300. Never in my life would I have thought that the city of Bismarck North Dakota would be such a beacon of hope for me. Yet, after biking through mountain passes, rain, and vicious headwinds I couldn’t stop comparing Bismarck to a modern day Paris. When we got to Bismarck it felt like we were suddenly transported back into the modern world. Chain restaurants and stores replaced the little ma and pop gas stations that we had grown accustomed to. It was interesting to feel surrounded by so many people again. After getting an amazing bike tuneup/checkup by a former star biker from Honduras, we did some laundry and headed to our hotel. The hotel room was fabulous and had a view of the indoor pool- we were in heaven. After taking long, hot showers we headed across the street for a delicious Hibachi dinner! To say that we had been looking forward to this dinner for a long time would be an...

Richardton to New Salem Oh boy guys today was a slog (rogan btw!). We woke up to pouring rains on what was supposed to be an anxiety producing long day with bad winds. We were all tired and a bit beaten down, nervous to get to our rest day in Bismarck by tonight. So this downpour was not great news.  We decided that we would wait for the rain to pass and then see just how far we could get. But this day decided that it was gonna be one of those days, and so we had to start our ride walking up a (now, muddied) dirt road for three miles before getting in a paved road.  So now we’re on a good road heading out of Richardton and towards beautiful Bismarck, right? Nope! The winds were immediately apparent and terrible. Fierce headwinds with never ending rolling hills battered us every mile we struggled towards East. The day continued like this for forty wretched miles. When we arrived in New Salem, we knew that that would be our destination for the day. It was unfortunate to have to ...

7/15/23: Mercer to Conover  This morning we woke to a soggy campground and mist rolling over the lake. The scene had the mysteriously spooky beauty that a morning after rain creates. The rain that had begun yesterday evening had unfortunately continued throughout the night, and quite hard at times. Luckily we all stayed dry, but our tents and bike bags had not. I hoped we could wait to let things dry but the smoke in the sky was preventing the sun shining through and drying our belongings. By 8:30 we just decided to pack up our wet things and set off. After about 6 miles we joined with a beautiful bike path that we would follow for the better part of the day. The trail winded through dense pine forest, which made me feel like we were getting closer to home. It took tight turns and mini rollers that were a fun change of pace from the long wide roads we were used to. It made us feel like we had arrived at the amusement park of cycling, something akin to a racetrack. Since it was Satu...

  7/14/23: Hayward to Mercer This morning we treated ourself to a breakfast of potatoes, eggs, and veggie sausages before we left our wonderful little airbnb in Hayward. The rest day really worked, I actually felt rested and happy to be on my bike this morning and my bike felt like it was new again! Route 77 had some morning traffic, but as the day went on the roads got quieter and quieter. We were excited to listen to the new episode of The Retrievals. Podcasts seem to help me forget about the never ending pedaling. We stopped to make lunch at Clam Lake and then we continued on through Glidden and Butternut. As we were passing through Butternut, a woman appeared from behind a car and called out to us “where are you from?” It was getting late and we weren’t in the mood to chat so we yelled “Connecticut” as we continued biking. But she insisted we stop to talk to her. Shelley, a Butternut local, was so excited to hear about our trip, but she was even more entertained by our New Engl...

 Day 37: 7/13/2023 Rest day, best day !!! We always seem to have a lot of errands to run on our rest days but today was an especially big errand day because our bikes were getting a real good tune up !!! Liz’s uncle had schedule us to check in with New Moon bike shop at 9:30 am and boy did we have a laundry list of things for them to check out (I am mostly kidding- Liz and I just needed new chains but Kayla’s poor bicycle needed some TLC) . Funny how riding 2,000 miles will do that to a bike. We hung around the bike shop for a while until at 11 am we decided it was necessary to walk to the diner just down the street. After our bicycles got all fixed up at the bicycle hospital we went to do our next errand: laundry. Little did we know we put our laundry in a dryer at the laundromat that ran for 5 minutes before shutting off. Our third errand was getting Kayla new rain paints because hers were literally disintegrated. When we got back we finally got our clothes into a dryer that work...

July 12th  Balsam lake to Hayward Since it had been 8 days since our last rest day, we were all feeling a little run down and we’re not very excited to be biking the 81 miles to Hayward. Although an AirBnB and a rest day awaited us there so we had that to look forward to at least. I hoped that hayward would bring the recharge that both my body and my bike so desperately needed.  We set off from Balsam Lake around 8a and by 9:30a I had decided that I needed to put some hype music on if I was going to make it through this day (it’s never too earlier to get hyped!) Not only were my normal morning aches not wearing off like usual, my bicycle was in rough shape. The little tumble I had taken back in kindred, ND seemed to have messed up my shifting somehow and so it was skipping between gears whenever I tried to shift to easier gears. This hadn’t mattered too much on the flat terrain of North Dakota and Minnesota where I had little use for my easy gears. However since we entered Wis...

 Group 2 Day 26 (Audrey) Our first night in ND was pleasant, if you could ignore the grasshoppers. I had to catch two and convince them to get out of my tent, and I spent the rest of the night wondering if I’d find more in my sleeping bag. We decided to get breakfast in Medora, but our first stop at a cute cafe wasn’t quite what we were all looking for (AKA delicious blueberry muffins but no egg sandwiches). We stopped at the convenience store on our way out of town so a few of us could have a more hearty meal and to stock up on snacks for the day. Most of our ride was on lovely old highway 10, which took us right into Dickinson for lunch. After refueling at Subway, we found a grocery store and a bike shop just around the corner. The folks in the bike shop warned us about uncooperative winds for the rest of our ride to Richardton and recommended a couple places for a tuneup when we get to Bismarck. We had another quick snack stop in Taylor before finishing up the day in Richardton....

 Maura here. Today we woke up in Glendive and got breakfast at the only place open at 8am on a Sunday - Subway. Their egg sandwiches are not the best but they will do the job. After loading up on snacks and cliff bars, we hit the road. Unfortunately, that road was indeed an interstate highway. I felt pretty ridiculous entering an on-ramp on a bike but thankfully we were only on there for 10 miles. Eventually we hopped on a side road which was scenic but super hilly. Hills have definitely gotten easier with practice, but there are still plenty of times I feel so slow that I could walk faster. Today was a bit of that. A few miles later we made it to Wibaux, which we had been debating on how to pronounce this entire time. Turns out it's 'weeee-bow', in case you were wondering as well. Anyways, we rolled up to a miracle otherwise known as Tastee Hut -- the ultimate drive in/burger shack in the middle of nowhere. After some fries, shakes, and a full ice water restock, we sent of...

 Group 2 Day 24 (Audrey) I think all five of us woke up with a stomachache from stuffing ourselves with fried food and pizza after such a rough day yesterday. We had a light breakfast and got moving for our last full day in the 4th largest state. Very excited to get out of Montana. Whoever told us it would be flat after the continental divide was unfortunately dead wrong. Eastern Montana is super hilly, and I went into the day dreading more endless climbs. Plus it seems like the wind is always against us, no matter which way the road turns. Even one of my favorite audiobooks couldn’t keep me distracted on a few of the tougher stretches. I switched to Taylor Swift instead, and luckily I was far enough behind the others that they couldn’t hear me breathlessly shouting along to Love Story (TV) on loop. Thankfully Route 200 eventually flattened out, and a very helpful series of abandoned train cars blocked the wind for a while. We stopped for a quick lunch break in Lindsay, a “town” th...

 We woke up this morning with a 60 mile day ahead of us. In our heads, it was gonna be a pretty easy day, after the 100 mile day we had just completed the day before. It started out with some uphills, as the landscape started to change from prairie to badlands, then another hill, then another one... unfortunately this ended up lasting just about all day. We were happy to come across a rest stop where we could take a break and vent about how many hills there were, and about what a tease it was to have flat riding and headwinds for ONE DAY after glacier, only to seemingly never come across such a thing again. At the rest stop, we took some time to read one of the historical signs we have become quite fond of throughout this trip, and soon learned that the county we were in was home to the Hell creek formation, where most of the worlds T-Rex and many other dinosaur fossils were unearthed! You better believe I used my excitement about the dinosaurs to distract myself from all the hills...

 7/11/23 Today we left Minnesota! It went by too fast and I’m sad to see it go. Minnesota was particularly special for me because of family. I am so grateful to have family who will go out of their way to support me. Hands down my favorite part of Minnesota was getting to see my grandma (followed closely by getting to bike with Rick and Kathy). I had been looking forward to seeing her for days and I couldn’t stop smiling! (Thank you guys for finding me, love you!) We started this morning at the Bicycle Bunkhouse in Dalbo, MN. Our host, Donn, came over to drink coffee and chat about our route ahead. He is one cool dude and makes me want to open a bicycle bunkhouse. Then we were off to Wisconsin! The first 45 miles we winded through backroads. After about 30 miles of taking rights and lefts it kind of felt like we were getting nowhere. But we filled time by chatting about what everyone dislikes most about biking cross country (which generated some interesting answers). We saw a flock...

 Day 34: 7/10/2023 It seems that I get the pleasure of writing about all of our longer days.. I don’t mind it though, more cool things to talk about!  Today we knew was going to be a busy one- we had 98 miles to bike, a morning grocery store and bakery stop to make, and some family to visit with. I joked with Liz and Kayla saying that we needed to perform “express checkout” from our campsite in the morning. headed to the highly recommended Jitter’s Cafe where Liz’s uncle had so amazingly left a gift card for us to buy some baked goods! We have just been so incredibly grateful for the kindness and hospitality of everyone we have run into in Minnesota. Next up, grocery store (the usual stuff here nothing exciting) before we hopped back onto the bike path that we’ve been riding on. We got to Holdingford, MN and decided to take a quick break when this man approached us and told us about his bicyclist cafe/art gallery just down the path. Unfortunately, they are closed on Mondays- b...

 July 9  Fergus Falls - Sauk Center Spoiler alert: today was amazing! It was filled with all sorts of lovely: lovely bike trails, lovely weather, and best of all lovely people! The day started in the home of Mike and Lexi, our super cool and kind Warm Showers hosts. Lexi cooked us up a massive breakfast, which even included vegetarian sausages, such a surprising treat, liz and I were so excited. As we were finishing up packing up our things to start riding Lexi’s mom shouted her goodbyes down the stairs :“HAVE A GREAT LIFE! YOU’RE OFF TO A GOOD START!” I know she doesn’t actually know us, but I would agree with her. Then Mike biked with us through fergus falls to the bike path that we would be on for the next 100 miles. Mike is a cyclist but hadn’t been on his bike yet this summer so when we started riding in the morning he was grinning from ear to ear. The joy was palpable and infectious! We all couldn’t help but smiling. Plus, it was such a treat to have new company and be o...

As I was writing this (2 days late) Keelin said she was going to “get in her bicycle” and then she got in her tent… So on day 32 we woke up in a beautiful city park in Kindred, ND, packed up, and stopped by the market in town to grab groceries. While we were loading the food into our bikes, a man in a truck pulled over to tell us how excited he is to see cyclists. He told us he often drives around town looking for bikers since he himself always wanted to bike cross country. 3 years ago treated some cyclists to lunch and they mentioned him in their blog which he followed closely. It clearly made his day. Now he’s in our blog too! We biked through backroads and small highways through farmland. We were so mesmerized by the crop planes that we didn’t even realize we had left North Dakota until we were a few miles from Barnesville, Minnesota!  We stopped for lunch (pbjs) and some ice cream at dairy queen. Turns out 3 other cyclists had the same idea! We met Joe and his dad Brian, and To...