My second COVID vaccine dose is scheduled for 19 April. Traveler services are steadily reopening in the western US, so I booked lodging for a bike tour in Nevada and California. The May 11-24 tour will be called "Silver and Gold" because the route passes the richest silver mine in the US, then travels the entire length of the California gold rush country.

Presently museums are closed and restaurants still don't have indoor dining. But I'm optimistic that things will be more open by May thanks to the fast pace of vaccinations. Lodging is reserved, so the schedule is fixed. Crossing my fingers that everything will be open.

Where are you going for your first (hopefully) post-pandemic bike tour?

We have lodging for a  five week tour in Michigan/Wisconsin booked, starting the end of June. 

We also have a ten day Colorado Fall Colors Tour booked for September.

I anticipate doing a short 4-5 day tour in Colorado during June as a warm up, just because I can. 

All of our touring is restaurant/motel. While we toured last summer, local merchants and motels were happy to have our business. I expect more of the same this summer.

I hope you have a great spring tour and that we can ride together this fall!

I'm planning to head out in May to cycle around the US, seeking out rail- trails and good swimming holes.

My wife and I have our second COVID shot Apr 7 and plan to do a 270-mile jaunt from Tampa to St Augustine in May. Shorter than what I normally take but I get a riding partner on this one! Stoked!

I'll journal the trip and also post a ride video on YouTube. Stay tuned

Here’s our plan: Minneapolis to New York, June 3rd - August 9th; followed by Amsterdam to Rome, August 10th to November 8th.  The flights are booked, but nothing else; we’ll book our lodging as we go.  If parts of Europe are still closed in August we’ll rethink the plan when we hit the Atlantic. 

Hi Scott,

Your route through MI and OH to Buffalo looks very similar to our plan in those states. Though we are taking the ferry to Ludington and dropping down to Montpelier OH to start catching Rail to Trails to Buffalo and then the Erie Canal route.

Hoping Europe opens up too we fly from Boston to Amsterdam October, though for a family visit, leaving our bikes behind.

Happy Travels

Racpat

Hi Wayne, I have a silly question about Ride GPS....we've started creating maps for our tour that are in Kilometers. Is there a way to change to miles? And is your map a screenshot or one uploaded from the Ride GPS site?

Congratulations on the upcoming second dose, hopefully more people will choose to be vaccinated and we can start moving about more.

Happy Travels

Racpat

The Ludington ferry is still out there as an idea, paired with a detour to Door County.  We might go this way in particular if Canada opens up in time to take a more northern route.  At this point we really only have two fixed points - the airports on both ends.

I can answer the miles/kilometers question. My answer will be based on the phone app (I’m using an iPhone). On the home screen there will be a settings icon in the upper left, clicking on that will take you to a menu of things you can control. The first item is Account Settings, where, if you want to log things in metric units you click that button. In my case it seems to have  defaulted to miles, and the metric system has to be turned on, or in your case, turned off. Probably I need to update my app to make sure this is still the same procedure. RideWithGPS is based here in Portland so that’s probably while its default setting is miles. I hope this helps. I’ve been lax about uploading maps to our journals but Scott Anderson can walk you through it, if you need any help with that.

Hi Wayne,

That looks like a nice tour with a cool precious metals theme.  Have fun.

I haven't made any springtime plans yet because, after having to cancel last year's tour that connected four Chihuahuan desert National Parks in West Texas and New Mexico, I'm still feeling a little hesitant.  But it's been 19 months since my last tour and if I don't do something soon I'm going to go nuts!

Here in Minnesota, our governor is opening up the Covid shots for healthy people who are under 65 on March 30th.  That includes me, so I'll be signing up tomorrow.  Unfortunately, once you get outside of the Twin Cities metro area, there are a lot of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers out there.

I'd rather not test the effectiveness of the vaccine quite yet, so whatever plans I concoct this spring will probably be short, close to home, spur-of-the-moment, mostly camping, minimal human contact and, most importantly, FUN.

I'm hoping late summer/ early fall will be the time to do my longer trip.