July 5, 2024 – Keep Calm and Pedal On

We didn’t start out with a goal of riding bicycles in every state. As is the case for most of us, life experiences reveal opportunities and subsequently goals and the steps to accomplish them.

After we finished riding across the country on the Northern Tier route, we’d racked up 11 more states in addition to a few we already had in the bank. And COVID, although a limitation for many, provided time for us to spend time outdoors on bikes. Hence in February 2020, we made our state list and checked states off one by one in a variety of different ways.

Lucky for us (or maybe unlucky because we may not return) when we visited Alaska and Hawaii, we were able to get a couple rides in, even before riding a bike in every state was a thought.

In Anchorage to run a marathon and rode our first and ONLY tandem bike. Tom never coasts. He is always peddling.

After running the Kauai Marathon we visited the Big Island. We arose at 3am to ride to an active volcano spewing lava.

After completing our 48th and 49th state on our very own Tour de N’Utah we started talking about Oregon and where we wanted to ride. We’d never experienced a fully supported bike tour together so our conversations included questions like:

What would the experience be like handing the reins over to people we’d never met to choose routes, mileage, departure times or make food choices?
What would it be like to finish a day of cycling and then meet other “strangers” for dinner and conversation every night? Whoa that’s a lot of talking.
What would it be like to ride road bikes again after essentially marrying our Salsa Cutthroats for life?
What would it be like finishing a ride with snacks and bevvies laid out and our clothing bags already safety stowed in our room instead of setting up a tent, using the “facilitrees” and cooking up a one pot meal over a camp stove?

Dinner is served along the Natchez Trace. June 2019

We’d seen Backroads vans and riders while on tour and commented how nice it must be to skip the tough parts with sketchy traffic patterns and road conditions. How nice it must be to cut off some of the elevation and most importantly, is it even a bike tour if someone else is schlepping clothing, gear and food in a van instead hauling it on our own bikes? Who could we trust to be responsible for navigation and finding/cooking meals? Would we be “cheating”? I mean we’d never done such a thing together. We rode the Tour d’Wyoming, MUP and TRIRI rides where some of that was taken care of but the Backroads tour seemed uber plushie and that just didn’t seem like us.

At the end of the day, we chose to return to Bend and Sisters and based on reviews, knew Backroads would be the best choice for us. As we talked about it, we were both comfortable with that decision and trusted that the people God brought to us that week would be people that would inspire us, teach us and entertain us. And we weren’t wrong.

Our group of fourteen cyclists included us of course, three sisters, a couple with young children and a solo traveler, all from California. A couple from Iowa helped represent the Midwest, and two couples from Florida rounded out our group. The age range was mid-forties to seventy something. All were strangers on day one and parted as friends at the end.

Backroads, or “Snack”Roads, as they are lovingly referred to, goes to great lengths to use locally sourced food to create carefully curated lunches that offer not only variety but taste. The tours at the Deschutes Brewery, Alpaca Country Estates and Rainshadow Organics were something that Tom and I would never stop and take time to visit if touring self supported. Most of the time we’re too tired.😂

At the end of the week, Tom and I agreed, we’d choose to end our Fifty State Chase again in exactly the same way. What a treat! Now that doesn’t mean we won’t do self supported bike tours in the future, but much to my surprise, I’m guessing another Backroads tour may be in our future, particularly an international destination.

Yes, the scenery is remarkable, the accommodations and food exemplary and the local side trips worth it, but our guides, Brandon, Lael and Leni make the magic happen. That’s all I have to say about that.

As far as costs, our six day bike tour in Central Oregon (plus the cost for airplane tickets, trip insurance and a hotel stay on both ends of the tour in Bend) cost about as much as our 65 day self supported bike tour in early 2023 when we cycled from San Diego to Key West. However, I wouldn’t trade either trip as both are as remarkable as they are unique.