About the cross the US
 

Hi Hubb! My name is Adam and I'm about the solo cross the USA on a DR650, departing in just a few days. Im hoping for last minute advice and perhaps to post up some content from my travel. I've been a HUBB lurker for some time but might have met some of you at the Virginia 2016 meeting. At 29, I was one of the younger riders there. My ride experience includes, Peru (14 days/1200 miles) and Brazil (10 days/1000 miles) and Mexico (2 days/200 miles).

I attached a few pictures. My bike and unfinalized trip route. Blue lines are pretty finalized but red sections are TBD. Any advice on the best way to cross the red lined sections would be super helpful, points of interest I missed, etc. For instance, is it possible to train my bike from VA to CO/MO to spend more time exploring the west. If there is a better thread for this. Let me know.

Hi Adam and welcome to, well, here. We did something vaguely similar to your route this time last year (not the deep south or the loop into Canada) starting and finishing in NJ and covered about 10k miles.

If you're heading west about now you'll have no real problem (other than heat) but it gets cold fast if you're going to be up north in October or later. If you do find a way to ship the bike across the mid west post it up here as I'd be interested.

If you're running a blog or something I'd be interested to see how you get on as the deep south and over the border into Canada are probably the next two trips I'll be doing in the US.

I don't know of any practical way to ship a bike between the East Coast and the Rockies. There are shippers who'll happily do that for you (and at least one website which tries to match you with a private individual who happens to be headed your direction with some space to offer), but making the arrangements always seems to me more trouble than it's worth. Just jump on your bike and ride.

OP, you don't say enough about your trip to offer much specific advice. How do I really know what to suggest when I don't know what time of year you'll be anyplace in particular, or what your interests are? Is this a three-week race against the clock, or a three-month exploration? And when you ask for points of interest, what in particular do you find interesting?

I've done lots of cross-country drives and rides. Personally, I hate cities, and I despise long, flat, polluted stretches of multi-lane turnpike. Heading west, I typically either take a northern loop through some combination of Ontario, Michigan, Wisconsin and/or Minnesota, or a central route through the Virginias, Kentucky and/or Tennessee. That's designed to get me as close to the mountains as possible before I run out of trees and hills and have to suffer through the Plains.

Per backofbeyond, you're already pushing into shoulder season in the Canadian Rockies and the higher sections in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. That could bring fine, brisk weather....or it might bring snow. In fact, it always snows on me at least once in the Rockies during September--doesn't last long, but it makes for treacherous travel. October might stay clear, but it's worth thinking about the consequences if it doesn't.

If it's mid-October or later by the time you get to WA and Oregon, you might find lots of damp, fog, rain, and general gloom. Or not--again, there's no predicting long in advance. If it's November when you get to the Sierra Nevada or the Four Corners region, you might hit some genuine cold snaps, with or without snow. October would more of a safe bet.

In all cases, I tend to watch the weather forecasts and adjust my route planning accordingly. If it's late October and you're aiming east from southern Utah, storms in the Rockies suggest ducking south into the endless, mostly-uninspiring expanses of West Texas. If it's early December, that's pretty much a given.

Etc. Hope that's helpful.

Mark