I see your new, tighter mileage route now. Yes - you definitely avoid the populated area of Utah!

I have never bicycled Flaming Gorge. It's grown to be intimidating to me, as I've heard several horror stories about how difficult it is. I know you like a challenge, you might love it! There's a good account (with motels) on that other place -2 Brothers, Utah Mountains 2017. They have good journals for research, lots of details.

I get all wound up on routing details. I'll let you alone to do your own research now. Let me know if you'd like clarification on anything.

I do know about copying a route - I just wasn't clever enough to change the name! I do see you gave me credit, thank you.

This year, we did hit the populated parts of Utah (Payson/Provo/Heber), but on the border to border trip, I wouldn't say it was populated. The piece approaching Afton, WY was spectacular. Jacinto's opinion on the Altamont, UT day is that we were tired from battling the wind (true) and the trucks were just the icing on the cake for a tough day. Scenery all along there clear up to WY is desirable.

Your proposed timing could be a real plus, traffic wise. You might even want to dip into Yellowstone, with that time frame.

I hope it works out for you. I'd love to see your take on the route.

Kelly - thanks for your email, as I get farther along I may seek your help. Right now I'm just planning a "possible" tour. A few notes of interest; 1.) you can click on the title of a RWGPS map made by someone else in Cycleblaze and it opens in RWGPS, then you can save a copy of it to your own routes list - so I saved a copy of your map and have just edited it a bit, I didn't have to start from scratch, 2.) I wanted to ride this route in May and June, but due to other things going on I don't have time to be prepared by then so I'm planning a mid-August start that would finish in early to mid-October, 3.) because of that late start, I would ride it from north to south, 4.) the main changes I want to make to your route include not riding the portion from Ennis to Missoula (it's a great route, but it's part of the Transam and I have ridden it previously), not diverting over towards Salt Lake City (just trying to miss the big city population), and not diverting into Colorado as much. I haven't put any real thought into the route yet, so far just drawing lines on a map. I read the link to Wayne's journal, that looks like a very good (but challenging) route. If I go north to south I may need to pay attention to wind more.

https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/nwcolorado/day-4-fruita-to-rangely-douglas-pass/

Here is a link to Wayne Estes' day climbing Douglas Pass.

I see you've gone to the trouble of recreating the route on RWGPS - that took some work! Even the best route can be improved. Two places I can think of right away is going into Rifle (home). We came home to sleep in our own bed. The ride between Grand Junction and Rifle along the interstate isn't that exciting. Our first choice was to take Highway 65 over Grand Mesa, but we wanted an extra day in our own bed. If you are feeling up to a 5,000 foot gradual climb that will be memorable for all of the good reasons - this is your climb. OR, an alternate route would be to take a left and Grand Junction and ride over Douglas Pass to Rangely. It's a challenging day on a good day, and a horrible day if you hit the wind wrong. Does that sound like a good recommendation? The appeal to Douglas Pass is riding through desolate Utah type shrubbery, then popping up into the alpine, and back down into sagebrush. The top is a wonderful surprise, with a creek, beaver dam, etc. There's also petroglyphs right by the side of the road all along the way.

The second place, right off hand, that I would make a change is between Roosevelt, Utah and Altamont. It was a short stretch of misery. We thought we were on a nice country back road, but instead it was a busy, narrow trucking road to a gravel pit (?). 87, slightly to the south, might be a better choice.

feel free to email me about any route discussion you'd like to take off list. kelly.iniguez@gmail dot com

I think this route is a real winner, even more so with the experience of more wheels traveling it.

This trip is still our collective all time favorite. Yesterday, out of boredom, I started routing a different border to border. I got into Wyoming before I got cross eyed. It's not as good (scenic, direct) of a route as this Chevy route. I was trying to find new roads, while still heading north. I purposefully included a couple of dirt roads in Colorado, to try and include some new roads.

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/41892253

That's all a long way to say that we might be passing that way again!

Kelly - you noted "We know that the road out of town is narrow and not bicycle friendly. My hope is that traffic will be low because it's the weekend." Just FYI, the ACA routing for the Northern Tier between Whitefish and Eureka has 2 diversions off of Highway 93, and they are much more pleasant riding. It does add about 9 miles to the overall trip segment though.

The ACA route is what my map shows; https://www.cycleblaze.com/journals/warriordeath1/day-70-whitefish-state-park-to-eureka-mt/

I have a video in that day's entry that shows some of the off-highway riding. Just a tidbit in case you pass this way again.

Keith,

That's interesting. We've always thought that which foot you use is related to your dominant hand. I'm left handed and use my left foot. Jacinto is right handed. Hmmm.

Is Jacinto a motorcyclist? (Or was he in the past?) An astute observer once noted that I, too, and a right-foot-down person and guessed that I had ridden a motorcycle in my past. She was right. Seems moto riders tend to put their right foot down because they need their left foot (toes) to operate the gearshift lever when getting started again.

White Ortliebs - we were on a coach tour in outback Queensland when we saw a tourist with white Ortliebs covered with red dust, not a good look!