"Have you ever dreamed of leaving winter behind, of meeting spring under far-southern skies, of following its triumphal pilgrimage up the map with flowers all the way, with singing birds and soft air, green grass and trees new-clothed, of coming north with the spring?" - Edwin Way Teale, North With the Spring, 1951
The "Atlantic Coast" trip is a 53-day bike ride from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Bar Harbor, Maine. We get on the bikes on April 22nd and finish on June 12th.
I'm travelling once again with WomanTours - same outfit that I did the Southern Tier (San Diego, California to St. Augustine, Florida) with in 2013. In fact, it looks like there will be 9 of the same women on this trip! I guess that says good things about the experience that we had on the Southern Tier. This is the first time that WomanTours has offered this route. Hopefully there won't be too many surprises for them/us.
I'm really looking forward to this route. I think it will be very pretty and will provide lots of opportunity to take in some places of historic significance. Undoubtedly we'll hit a bit more rain than the ST route, but I guess that's the price we'll pay for all that greenery. Besides - a good excuse to go shopping for new rain gear :) I can just hope that the precipitation won't continue at the same rate as the snow storms of this past winter on the East Coast.
Total mileage is advertised as 2528 miles, or 4068 km. We'll see how close we come to that number......
The goal is to stay away from some of the larger urban centres and cycle on quieter roads and bike paths. That will inevitably result in a bit a of zig-zag route in places.
Here's the WT description: We'll start in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, hugging the coast as we make our way north. We'll stop in quaint beach towns and then head into the Deep South past cotton and tobacco plantations. Then it's onto Virginia where you can visit Colonial Williamsburg during our layover day. We've planned our next layover day in Alexandria where you can take the paved Mount Vernon Trail to the monuments o Washington DC and to one of the free museums that make up the Smithsonian Institution. We'll skirt the city of Philadelphia and then head into New England in time for spring. We'll finish the route in Bar Harbor by Acadia National Park.
We'll be passing through 14 states plus the District of Columbia, so if WT keeps up their tradition of providing margaritas prior to dinner on the day of crossing a state line, there's going to be a lot more alcohol in my system than I'm used to.
About 5 weeks to go (as of March 17th). Uncharacteristically for Calgary, I've been able to get out for a few bike rides this week. It may still snow, but I've been out 3 times already! Not enough to call it training, but it's a start.......
