About The Route

3100 Miles From San Diego to St. Augustine, FL-Beginning March 24, 2013

After we climb away from San Diego on the California coast and topping out at 3,800 feet, the desert will appear. The route travels through the Yuha Desert and the below-sea-level, irrigated Imperial Valley, before splitting the Algodones Dunes Wilderness Area in half. In Arizona, we travel through Phoenix, the copper-mining towns of Miami and Globe, the Boyce Thompson Arboretum State Park east of Superior and the Besh Ba Gowah Archeological Park in Globe.  Here we will be riding though dry, sparsely populated ranch country where every town will be a welcome sight and a chance to top off the water bottles. New Mexico offers  the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, some of the best preserved Mogollon cliff dwellings around.

Riding along the Rio Grande into El Paso, we may be  treated to visions of migrating birds  flying north for the summer. Texas dominates this route, taking up an entire third of the mileage. Starting in El Paso, the route follows the river southward before turning east and heading through the Davis Mountains.  We'll pass the McDonald Observatory atop 6,800-foot Mt.  In the Davis Mountains, towns are few and the country desolate, full of sagebrush and tumbling tumbleweeds. As we travel through central Texas, the terrain starts to feel like the Alps, but this is actually the famous "hill country." This diverse area is said to serve some great barbeque. 

Louisiana is like no other state in the United States due to its history, language, culture, and food. Traveling right through the middle of Cajun country, in places like Mamou, We look forward to some great Cajun music. Mississippi offers rural riding all the way into Alabama, where the route crosses a bridge to Dauphin Island. From there it's a ferry ride across Mobile Bay to Gulf Shores and some of the whitest beaches in the world. The scenery varies greatly across Florida, from the historic coastal city of Pensacola to the alligator-filled waters of the area around Palatka. The route ends in St. Augustine, a city full of interesting buildings and the Castillo de San Marcos, a fort that has guarded the city's waterfront for over three centuries.

The route offers challenging terrain right from the start, with some longer climbs leaving San Diego all the way up to In-ko-pah Pass, about 70 miles east of the Pacific coast. There are two mountain passes in New Mexico, the highest being Emory Pass at 8,228 feet, which is also the route's highest point. The route just north of Silver City, New Mexico, which goes to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, offers some steep, challenging, rolling mountains, as does the hill country west of Austin, Texas. East of Austin the route flattens out as it meanders through piney woods, by bayous, along farmlands and woodlots, and past the Gulf Coast all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

Isolated stretches, especially in the western states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas are not uncommon. Services are infrequent and can dictate long miles on some days. The 144-mile stretch from Marathon to Comstock, Texas, calls for specific planning and carrying of food and water.

[Courtesy of Adventure Cyclist Association]