NOT YET STARTED
8/16 - 54 miles
8/17 - 57 miles
8/18 - 57 miles
8/19 - 84 miles
8/20 - 0 miles
8/21 - 0 miles
8/22 - 73 miles
8/23 - 77 miles
NOT YET STARTED
8/24 - 45 miles
8/25 - 0 miles
8/26 - 46 miles
8/27 - 38 miles
8/28 - 46 miles
8/29 - 50 miles
8/30 - 0 miles
8/31 - 0 miles
9/1 - 80 miles
9/2 - 33 miles
9/3 - 0 miles
9/4 - 50 miles
9/5 - 46 miles
NOT YET STARTED
9/6 - 71 miles
9/7 - 34 miles
9/8 - 63 miles
9/9 - 0 miles
9/10 - 54 miles
9/11 - 51 miles
9/12 - 75 miles
9/13 - 60 miles
9/14 - 0 miles
9/15 - 0 miles
NOT YET STARTED
9/16 - 71 miles
9/17 - 35 miles
9/18 - 76 miles
9/19 - 0 miles
9/20 - 65 miles
9/21 - 65 miles
9/22 - 59 miles
9/23 - 42 miles
FINISHED
| Start | End | Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Havre | Havre | Rest Day |
What’s there to do on a day of rest? Why, watch the movie Forrest Gump of coarse! (…I have to give my editor something to do…)
“Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.” That applies on the road as well.
Below are some photos I didn’t want left out of the story…
| Start | End | Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Joplin | Havre | 55 |
The birds start chirping at 4 AM, almost on the dot. By 4:15 they’re in full voice.
It was windy last night. That is putting it mildly. It looks like today I’m going to get my West wind. So far I have slept in cold, in rain, and now high wind. If I had to choose between the three, I would take wind. The tent performed better in the wind than it does in the rain. One thing you don’t have to worry about in high wind is condensation inside the tent.
It turns out the wind was out of the Northwest, but it still helped riding. The Northwest wind pushed me slightly forward, but also away from the white line, which is helpful.
The Sweet Grass Hills (see photo below) possess special powers for the Blackfeet Indians. According to legend, the Creator Napi fashioned the hills in the distant past from remnants left over from the creation of the Rocky Mountains. Napi liked the hills so much that they became one of his favorite resting places. The Blackfeet people used these hills as a vantage point when hunting game and watching for enemies. Because these hills are so closely tied to the creation of the earth, they are a spiritual place for the Blackfeet people. Often teenage boys would go up into the hills on a vision quest to help guide them into adulthood. Many epic stories have been handed down through time of great journeys and important discoveries made by young men on their vision quests.
Sweetgrass Hills outside Northwest of Joplin.
Horse of many colors.
| Start | End | Miles |
|---|---|---|
| Troy | Libby | 19 |
Today was a short day but it felt good after yesterday’s 60 miler. The first thing I did when I hit town was grab an espresso. It was chilly today and my hands got cold. It loots like a storm is blowing in this afternoon. I’m happy to be finishing up early. Tomorrow I’m going to wear my warm gloves! If you are an editor by nature, try and guess which two sentences above I normally would have combined into a run-on sentence but MIRACULOUSLY refrained from doing so.
Kootenai Falls.
Sadly, I did not see any!
As you scroll these pages you will find detailed maps, route planning, information about equipment and a little bit about my past tours.
This is my third trans-continental bicycle tour. This will complete the “trifecta” of trans-continental bicycle tours. There are three established routes across the United States, The Southern Tier, from San Diego California to St. Augustine Florida, which I completed in 2019, the TransAmerica Tour from Yorktown Virginia to Astoria Oregon, which I completed in 2023, and the Northern Tier tour, from Anacortes Washington to Bar Harbor Maine, which I plan to begin June 1st.
Beginning June 1st I will be posting a story each day with a photo. Please feel free to drop into this site and follow along. To follow the daily updates, you can use the following link.
Side note: for those of you living in Oregon, you will be interested to know that the first woman to trans-con was the Grandmother of the owner of Chariot Bike right here in Bend. It’s a great shop.
Enjoy the ride!
The Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) has established many classic bicycle touring routes across the United States, possibly none more scenic than the Northern Tier Route. The Southern Tier and the TransAm are the other two classic transcontinental routes. I have ridden the Southern Tier and the TransAm, the Southern in 2018 and the TransAm in 2023. It’s time to complete the trifecta.
The Northern Tier is the longest of the three routes. I plan to do it solo unless there are others that want to join. My intent is to camp and cook most of the time. From time-to-time I will be taking meals at restaurants along the way and staying in motels or hostels. My partner is planning to sag me the first few days, likely across the state of Washington. The would be the first 400 miles. After that she will meet me along the route in a couple of different places for some rest days and to enjoy some of the many sites along the route.
I’ll be starting the tour in Anacortes Washington on June 1st and finish in Bar Harbor Maine. This makes sense for me because I live in Central Oregon and Anacortes is a one day drive from my doorstep.
There are four major mountain passes along the route. It will be challenging. I believe nows the right time to have a go at the Northern Tier. I’ve been given the gift of cycling and I’m not getting any younger. I’m not world class, but I enjoy the experience and find it challenging and also exhilarating. I will be using the ACA’s digital map set to navigate the route.
I ride a custom titanium road bike built by Bill Davidson in Seattle Washington. I’ll be carrying my gear in Ortlieb front and rear panniers on Nitto Campee touring racks. I have a hub generator for the front light. I would also like to use the hub generator to keep my cell phone charged, but I’m still working out the details on that. There are other options for charging, including solar. Since this route presents some road challenges, narrow shoulders in places and both truck and recreational traffic on the road, I’ll also be using look-back radar to keep me apprised of what is behind me. That is another piece of equipment to keep charged, so I may have to add a second generator to the bike. I might go with a simple handlebar mirror in lieu of radar, or I might opt for both. The rest of the equipment is what you would expect a trekking backpacker to carry.
For the mathematicians out there, here are some calculations you might like. These are approximations only.
As I get closer to the start date these will be refined. Once on the road these are subject to change.
I typically start riding early in the morning. That gives me the most options at the end of the day for finding accommodations, or setting up camp and cooking. I like to relax after dinner, unwind, write a bit about the day and generally get ready for the next day. A late start to the day’s riding just makes all that a lot more difficult. I do not ride after dark.
Keep scrolling. You will find information below about:
Each of the 11 sections on the route. These pages have been compiled from the official ACA mapping information.
My proposed itinerary. This is a suggested itinerary. Riding circumstances are variable. Weather, terrain, physical conditioning and a host of other factors could have an impact on this plan. The plan does not show rest days and will likely be modified before heading out and during the ride itself.
My personal training plan. Caveat: I’m not an expert in developing training plans but I think this is a good start. It’s a 13 week plan. Each week I will update that week’s training plan with pertinent commentary (just for fun).
I will be posting additional information here about sight seeing, side trips, campgrounds and other accommodations as I develop those.
You can follow me on the journey. Once the tour begins, I will be posting here every day, Use the link “Bicycling the Northern Tier” on the Contents page to filter and view just those entries pertaining to the Northern Tier tour. (There’s a lot of other stuff here that may or may not be of interest. That is of course a matter of opinion and taste.
Here is one of my favorite photos from my TransAm tour in 2023.
Here is one of my favorite photos from my SouthernTier tour in 2018.
When I had the bike built back in 2018 I didn’t know much about dynamo hubs. I had a SON Deluxe added to the build but it only puts out 2.8w. That wasn’t a huge consideration for my first two tours because I was using paper maps for navigation. This is 2027 and I’ll be navigating digitally this time so keeping the phone charged is a must. The Schmidt SON Deluxe dynamo hub isn’t going to cut it.
This time around I’m probably going to go with the Schmidt SON 28. That is a high output dynamo at lower touring speeds. I will need to find a wheel builder that can put this together for me. It will be important to be able to take the headlight out of the circuit when maximum charging is needed. I’ll be charging to a power bank, not directly to the phone. That will give me more options.
FIre!
The winter season rain and snow accumulation is significantly below normal in the U.S. This makes the likelihood of fires this summer, well, very likely. One Meteorologist in California recently said he was “scared shitless.” Based on this map from a recent Washington Post article…
It looks like this year the Northern Tier is the best choice of the three ACA trans-continental bicycle routes. The TransAm looks like it carries the most risk of wildfires enroute, Even the Southern Tier route looks like it carries with it a likelihood of fire and smoke hazard. What this means is that I will be carrying masks in my panniers. Hopefully I won’t need them. The worst case scenario is of course the need to reroute. I want to stick with the ACA route if at all possible, but if rerouting becomes necessary, I do carry the Komoot app and I won’t hesitate to ask for advice from locals along the way.
Highlights of this section are the Cascade Mountain Range, the plains of north eastern Washington and the mountains of northern Idaho. The Anacortes ferry terminal is the western terminus of the Northern Tier bicycle route and starting point for my tour. The first climb out of Anacortes is over Rainy Pass and Washington Pass in the North Cascades. This will make for a challenging start to the tour. I am anticipating sag support for this Section of the tour. I plan to ride self-supported from Sandpoint to the finish in Bar Harbor Maine.
