TRICYCLE TOUR NEWS FROM USA

Good Morning to all the AZUB Team from Montana, where we are now. We thought it was really the time for us to give you some news from our Tricycle Tour!

Plane company

We finished our loop in Europe in March, and we started our America Tour in April, in Montreal. After some troubles with our bikes that had been broken by the plane company (we got stuck in Montreal 3 weeks because of that), we finally hit the road!

The Quebec region and far

The Quebec region was really nice, especially for the people who always were so friendly, welcoming and helpful with us. Some of them we’ll never forget.

After that, we crossed Ontario that offered us some amazing landscape. Our dog Boyd really enjoyed it too thanks to the many lakes where he could swim and the many cycle paths where he could run next to us.

Then, we crossed the US border in Sault-Ste-Marie to arrive in Michigan that we found beautiful too. We followed the west coast of it, where we crossed the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park among other nice spots, and we followed the coast until Ludington, where we took a ferry to Green Bay, Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, the landscape was pretty boring we have to say, but again, people were friendly so we had really good times. It was the same in the south of Minnesota, boring landscape but great people.

After that, we crossed all South Dakota. The Eastern part was soooo boring again: fields, long straight roads, fields, prairies, fields, prairies… and of course, headwind all the time and very hot temperatures with no shade at all for us to rest. It was very hard. When we crossed the Badlands National Park, we had the hottest day with 104°F and a 30 miles headwind, very challenging, but we made it!!!

So far, we didn’t have any problems with our trikes, except some flat tires at times, we are really happy about them!

Written three months later

We are, at the moment, in San Francisco, where we celebrated Halloween yesterday, that was great!

When we arrived on the west coast in Oregon, we first started to follow the 101, which is so famous for cyclists! Honestly… we don’t know why… The road is not so nice, it is often very narrow, with little or no shoulders, and it is absolutely crowded, even in October!

Well, when we arrived in Florence, we decided to go east and inland again, to Bend, because we were already sick of the coast and also because we wanted to visit another of our sponsors, Ruffwear. Once in Bend, we actually met Mark completely randomly, which is funny. I asked him if we could stay one night at his place and he said yes, and we had fun with him and his wife, great people.

California and Mexico

After Bend, we didn’t want to go to the coast right away, so we ended up visiting Crater Lake, south of Bend. The route was hard, very intense and steep, but oh… that was really worth it. Crater Lake was really gorgeous and absolutely unique. The colour of the water… we’d never seen that before.

We then crossed the California border and went back to the coast, to the highway 1 this time. And then, alright, that was beautiful! Really worth it! But honestly, if we could give some advice to other travellers, it would be to just take the 1, and avoid the 101 before and after, not worth it. Especially when you have places like Bend, Crater Lake, and the mountains surrounding it nearby. It’s really better to stay inland in Oregon, before highway 1. But well, that is our personal opinion.

In the future, we plan to continue on the coast until San Diego, because we want to try to renew our visa at the Mexico border. We have a B2 visa (6 months) that ends on the 3rd of December. When we were in Montana, really close to the Canadian border, we tried to renew it there by going out of the US, and in again. Unfortunately, the customs guy there couldn’t renew it, apparently because it wasn’t expired yet. He advised us to do it in Mexico, the day our visa expires, and he guaranteed us that it would work. We read so many different experiences of people trying that though, that we are very stressed and not sure it’s gonna work, we’ll see…

Contributed by Alexys and Valerie

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