John and Pat’s Western Bike

Trip Adventure 2002

Introduction

This website contains pictures taken during John and Pat Dickinson’s Western Bike Trip Adventure of 2002. We started our trip on May 26, 2002 from Minneapolis by packing all of our equipment up in boxes and taking a Greyhound Bus to Holbrook, AZ. We biked across Arizona to Las Vegas, NV. At Las Vegas, we again packed up all our equipment and took a Greyhound bus from Las Vegas to Olympia, WA. We biked from Olympia to the Mexican border and returned to San Diego, CA. and packed up all our equipment for a third time and took a Greyhound bus from San Diego to Cedar City, UT. From Cedar City we biked across Southern Utah and Southern Colorado and turned North at Penrose, CO to our final destination of Fort Collins, CO arriving on August 22, 2002. We returned to Minneapolis on August 24, 2002 with our daughters, Leslie and Tracey, who had driven our van to Fort Collins to vacation with our daughter Natalie who lives in Fort Collins, CO. We biked a total of 3,466 miles in 91 days.

Several people have asked about the chronology of our route selection so I thought a few words of explanation may be helpful. Initially we were planning to start in Washington state and travel south along the coast to San Diego and then bike on to the Hoover Dam and up to Cedar City Utah and complete the route as we traveled. Originally we were not planning to travel in Arizona. The window of time that we had for the trip was from late May to late August that coincided with the time that our youngest daughter, Leslie, would be home from college to keep an eye on the house. In looking at the average temperatures and precipitation in Washington and Oregon in late May, we decided to come up with an alternate plan that would delay our arrival in the northwest for a couple weeks to let the weather become more agreeable. To take advantage of all the time that we had available for biking, we decided to add the Arizona section to the front end of the trip. The good news was that there were several things in Arizona that we wanted to see and the weather at that time of the year would not be too hot. The bad news was that we now had to deal with the logistics of getting ourselves and our equipment from Las Vegas to Olympia Washington and then from San Diego, CA to Cedar City, UT since we did not have enough time to bike the entire distance. Our solution, as you may have gleaned from the description above, was to use the Greyhound Bus.

Pictures Organized by State

With digital camera at the ready as we traveled, we took over 1100 pictures. That number of pictures has been reduced in what is presented here. In some cases, it was difficult to limit the selection. The pictures are further subdivided within each state for ease of identification and to facilitate viewing over slow speed internet connections. Use the links below to access Menus of the pictures in each grouping. Use your browsers Back Button for navigation:

Trip Diary

We carried a Compact iPAQ 3765 handheld computer with a foldable keyboard and solar recharger. Each evening, Pat would type up a summary of the day’s activities. The Diary is organized by day and can be found by clicking here. The Diary is 44 printed pages long so please be patient while it loads.

Contact Information

If you wish to contact us you may do so using the contact information below. We enjoy answering any questions you may have about our trip. We also enjoy hearing about bike trips that you may have taken.

John and Pat Dickinson jrdpad@aol.com

Last revised: November 11, 2004