Kelly,

Colorado has 64 counties. I wonder how many miles would be required to see them all?

Wayne that sounds like a graph theory maths challenge. Or it might be an example of ‘The Chinese Postman Problem’ named after the Chinese mathematician, Kwan Mei-Ko, who discovered it in early 1960's.

The problem that the Chinese Postman faces is he wishes to travel along every road in a city in order to deliver letters, with the least possible distance.  The problem is how to find a shortest closed walk of the graph in which each edge is traversed at least once, rather than exactly once. 

I have no idea how to work out the answer for Colorado. We might have to wait until Kelly works it out on her bike.

Graham, somebody calculated the shortest route to all 41 towns named Springfield in the United States. This would be an epic theme bike tour.

The map route starts in Springfield, Oregon, which has a mural depicting Springfield in The Simpsons animated TV show.

Wikipedia names 7 Springfields in Australia. A new theme to consider after you finish biking to all the state capitals. 

One of the biggest joys of cycle touring is the amount of food I can eat. So with that in mind...  Linking various food items or cultural foods together would be interesting. Sampling various beers or wines in a region or across regions. Sampling various coffee roasters' fare. Or even 'the best restaurant' tour where you search the top rated food places in every town you visit, or across a state, region or country.

Sorry, I like food!!

I also like to read. So linking various spots in a historical fiction to 'see'the book come alive.

Would writing a journal entirely in rhyming verse be a theme? I think so - you can read my latest tour along the New England Coast that delivers on that theme. I also had a previous tour (ironically along a similar route) where I started each day with a limerick. Theme-ish, I guess.

I'm planning a tour to return to the Erie Canal, now named the Empire Trail, and I plan to title that "Empire Strikes Back" and then each day's title will be the title from one of the Star Wars movies, i.e. "A New Hope" "The Phantom Menace" etc.

We just completed the Northern Tier "Another one for the bikes" with an emphasis on tying together rail to trails.

Racpat

I developed a new tour theme called Brigham Young's Promised Land. It will mostly likely be my first 2022 tour. I'm not a member of the faith, so culturally it will seem like touring in a foreign country.

Sweet! When do you ride?

Racpat 

Mid to late May 2022 is my plan, hoping for warm but not hot weather.