Vancouver going down

wheelermuk

Hi,
A few friends and I were planning on cycling from vancouver down to san francisco june/july sort of time. Just wondering if anyone here has cycled this area or similar or if anyone knows of the best places to get info for planning these sort of trips. Planning to take around 3 weeks to make the trip.
Cheers,
Matthew

robthehungrymonkey

When I did a season in Whistler a few years ago, a friend i was living with cycled from there down to Mexico when the Winter finished.

He mentioned that the obvious coast road was very pretty, but VERY windy and busy, so not ideal for cycling.

Sorry, but that's about all i remember!

raybo

I live in San Francisco and have ridden up and down the California coast. I've biked from Mendocino to San Francisco and SF to LA. The coast road is beautiful. Don't miss it.

As for the wind, it comes up in the afternoon and is a tailwind, if you are going south.

The coast road is a two-lane road. In some sections there are shoulders and in some none. If you stay off the narrow bits on weekends, you will go a long way to losing most of the heavy traffic. However, June/July is the seasons for holidays here and lots of people rent RVs and drive them on these roads. It is strongly recommended that you get a mirror, so you can see behind you, and pull off the road if a big truck or RV is coming and you don't like the looks of it. The worst experience I've had is to have semis (lorries) refuse to move over and pass very close to me.

This website has pictures of the entire California Coast so you can see what the road and terrain looks like: http://www.californiacoastline.org/

For planning purposes, this page has 5 links (including the one above) to information about bike touring on the US Pacific Coast.

This page has 13 links to information about bike touring in Washington State.

This page has 14 links to information about bike touring in Oregon.

This page has 52 links to information about bike touring in California.

Not all of these links deal with the tour you are planning but many of them will be of interest to you.

It is one of the planet's great bike rides!

Good luck,

Ray

wheelermuk

thanks guys
ray, some great info there, cheers

Gordon-T

If you buy the maps from www.adventurecycling.com, they'll tell you everything you need to know about conditions, distances and services. The route is really busy with cyclists; the campsites are cheap; the scenery is breathtaking. Enjoy.