East Coast USA coastline route - Need Advice
 

Those of you who have traveled the east coast of the United States, im looking for a nice motorbike route that hugs the coastline, primarily from the Carolinas down to Key West, but I am interested in the full coastline up to Maine as well! As far as I can tell the best, most efficient method of motorbike travel down the east coast while avoiding highways is US Highway 17 but it hits some annoying spots through metropolitan areas like Jacksonville, FL, Savannah, GA etc with lots of stop lights and traffic.

Hi, and welcome to the HUBB community!

Whenever I visit the USA to go riding, I look for roads that are called "Scenic Byways" and try and ride those roads. The American government (Federal Highway Administration) has a really useful website about these roads, see America's Byways.

Michael

I'd suggest getting yourself a Butler Motorcycle Map of the areas you want to visit. They highlight the best roads, and I'll bet you could string together a really nice route along the coast.

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"A nice motorbike route that hugs the coastline" sure covers a lot of ground--a couple of thousand road miles, much of which is heavily built up, overpopulated, clogged with traffic, and not even particularly scenic. You're more likely to gather useful suggestions if you limit your questions to one short section at a time, probably after doing your own research.

You might also want to define "hugging the coast," since that could have you wandering urban and suburban neighborhoods almost the entire length of, for example, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island, or doing the same on the mainland side of Long Island Sound, or skirting the whole New York metropolitan megapolis in favor of the very pleasant backroads of New York and southern New England (my personal preference).

No matter how you do it, "hugging the coast" will involve a lot of stoplights and strip malls. I've covered most of the coast at various points during the past 50 years, and only bits and pieces are really worth your time and energy. Even stuff that's fun to experience tends to get decidedly old after a while (c.f. Rt. 1 in Florida)--that's what interstate highways are for.

Don't know if that's helpful, but I hope it's a start.

Mark

I agree with Mark ^^^ - there are very few sections of the coast you'd genuinely consider 'scenic' - there are a few of course, but interspersed with huge urban areas which really are no fun on a bike...

I would get a copy of the MABDR (Mid Atlantic Backcountry Discovery Route) map, and couple that with the famous Blue Ridge Parkway as a basis of planning your own route slightly further inland, away from the chaos... the roads are quieter, the price of everything is cheaper, and the people more friendly - you'll get a far better impression of that part of the country compared to crawling your way though the big cities and tourist traps.

That said, you could quite easily punctuate an inland route with a few excursions closer to the coast - there are plenty of interesting places to visit from a historic/tourist point of view - Washington DC and then ride down the peninsular [and under the sea!] to Virginia Beach for example; and certainly once you reach Florida, it is worth visiting places like Daytona, the Kennedy Space Centre and the Miami beachfront, before finally heading down the Keys...

Whatever route you eventually decide on, I'd aim stay away from the main arterial roads as much as you can - dem people crazy!

Jenny x

Agree with markharf & JMO...if you imagine tooling down a road with a magnificent sea view and a sea breeze, you're going to be pretty disappointed. I haven't ridden the whole east coast, but in my experience there aren't many with sea views other than in crowded towns full of traffic, etc. The coast can be great, but I would pick and choose your destinations on the coast rather than to stay as close as possible--because usually it is not especially close.

I've been a bit reluctant to comment here before because as a visitor to the US I can't claim to know the coastline as well as someone who lives in the area, but over a number of trips (over probably 30+ yrs now) I've covered most of it from northern Maine down to around Orlando.

For the New England section - roughly New York northwards - I think you'll do well to find any sort of 'scenic' route that stays near the coast until you get up into Maine and past Portland. 'Scenic' is of course what you make it and on our last trip there (we were heading south) we rode the length of Long Island just to look at what was there. Not quite pristine wilderness to say the least. :rofl: but interesting in a kind of 'social tourism' way. North of Portland there's loads of little inlets and peninsulas that are fun to ride - Mount Desert Island and Bar Harbour probably being the best known of them - but in the summer (good luck doing it in winter) it's a tourist area so blocked up with RVs etc. We found inland - around the White Mountain area of NH - a much nicer area to ride, and particularly the finger lakes area of northern NY state.

South of New York is pretty awful - that 200+ miles from NY down past Washington is close to my idea of hell on earth. Last time we were heading south we went east of Philadelphia through the Wharton forest and took the Cape May ferry. The coast there is pretty much a ribbon development from New York down to Atlantic City so best avoided. Hit a holiday weekend and the traffic is stationary. The ride down through Delaware to the Chesapeake bridge / tunnel is pretty good - if you've come from the north you'll notice the drop off in traffic density after the ferry, but it does dump you in Norfolk. The one 'must do' bit for me though was after that - riding down the Outer Banks islands and the final ferry from Ocracoke to Cedar Island. That whole stretch down to around Wilmington was probably the area I've enjoyed the most.

The whole of the Chesapeake Bay area has a kind of 'weekend away' feel to it. There's loads of parks, campgrounds, clapboard fishing villages with rustic restaurants etc lining the coast. It's far from wilderness but it is the US leisure industry on a large scale and worth a visit. I suppose 'nature with facilities' would sum it up and that's what a lot of people want from their time off.

We were meant to do the SC + Georgia and down to Jacksonville section last year but Covid killed the trip off. Florida - from Jacksonville to Orlando anyway - is ok but very bucket and spade touristy and too humid for me (in the summer anyway). There's a few tourist things to do that are worthwhile that Jenny mentioned - Daytona, the Kennedy Space centre, both very much semi mythical places from the past (or my growing up in the UK in the 60's/70's past anyway).