The Route

Conjure up thoughts of gulls passing low over a sinuous road as the sun sets off in the westward sky. Betwixt the pines and windswept cypresses you hear the waves lapping against the shore. At campsites nestled tight against rocky crags, cyclists laugh over a campfire, sharing stories of the road, of the triumphs and tribulations that face every two-wheeled traveler.

That is the Pacific Coast Bike Route.

At least, that's how I imagine it to be. The Pacific Coast Bike Route is the most popular long-distance cycling route in the United States. The "official" route, published by the Adventure Cycling Associationm stretches from urban Vancouver, British Columbia and makes its way south largely on US 1 and 101. Along the way, the route passes through several distinct ecosystems, from the temperate rainforests of the Olympic Peninsula, to the venerable Redwoods of northern California and the Mediterranean scrub of southern California. The route terminates at the border with Tijuana, Baja California.

Here is the Adventure Cycling Associations overview of the Pacific Coast Bike Route. My intended route will be virtually identical, with a few minor deviations to take advantage of lower-traffic roads and bike trails. I also intend on crossing into Mexico at the end, since Tijuana is a really cool city to explore.

I'm confident that my paltry navigational skills should be good enough to keep me going in the right direction. Just keep the ocean to my right and eventually I'll make it to Mexico, right? But, should things take a turn for the worst (pun intended), then I'll have the Adventure Cycling Association's maps to help guide me south. I was originally planning on using the book "Cycling the Pacific Coast," but after looking at the ACA maps at a local bookstore I knew that they would be more helpful while on the road. That being said, the book is still a wealth of information; I've been perusing it over the past few weeks, and I must say that it has made me all the more restless and eager to get pedaling.

Of note is that I consider this trip to be Part 1 of a much grander undertaking: biking the PanAmerican Highway. The Carretera Panamericana is an informal connection of roads that stretch from the Arctic Ocean in Deadhorse, Alaska down to the southernmost city in the world: Ushuaia, Argentina ("el fin del mundo"). This journey has been a dream of mine ever since I started touring. There's something just so intriguing about following a path that spans the Americas and connects so many unique cultures, landscapes, and ecosystems. Perhaps I'm romanticizing it more than I should, but the allure still stands.

Of course, the time, cost, and general feasibility of completing such a trip in one go is a major limiting factor for folks, myself included. So, instead of tackling it in one go, I would like to break it up into 4-5 separate (yet still entirely commendable) bike tours. This summer I will be tackling Canada to Mexico. Next year? Perhaps Alaska to the US-Canada border, or the Baja Peninsula. I don't know at this point. All I do know is that I've got a coastline to follow, and damn if I'm excited about it.

In its truest sense, the PanAmerican Highway isn't a single, pre-established ribbon of road; rather, it is more of a hodgepodge of existing roads that happen to connect from Alaska to Argentina. There are many variations that bike tourists end up taking. Most also end up sailing around or flying over the Darien Gap, a 100 mile stretch of swampland between Panama and Colombia that the highway does not span.

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