Bicycle Touring in the United States: 3 Web Sites with Unique Maps

One of the best things about bicycle touring, outside of the personal rewards and sense of accomplishment one feels after a long ride, is the extensive and generous community of bicycle touring enthusiasts that has grown even larger with the advent of the Internet. At this point, there are countless numbers of websites that offer free bicycle touring maps for locations throughout the United States and worldwide. Major bicycle touring organizations such as the revered Adventure Cycling Association offer very defined and clear-cut maps that trace rather predictable routes that are highly frequented by bicycle tourists year-round in the United States. This is the best source for a first-timer looking for bicycle touring maps of the United States with the safest and most bike-friendly bicycle routes. This is also a great website and non-profit organization and should be a first stop for newbies looking into the idea of bike route websites.

My favorite spot to find great bicycle touring maps and bicycle routes through different areas and cities is at crazyguyonabike.com where tons of different bicycle tourists share their stories, journals and photos. While maps are not the primary focus of this website, I can say that this is one of the best bike route websites because most contributors discuss the specifics of their routes and better yet, they often take photographs or present great and descriptive stories and sights in written form. If you're unsure of what to expect when you use one of the bicycle touring maps or bicycle routes, just read through some of the journals posted at this resource. You will certainly find that even though it's not specifically geared to be one of the bike route websites, it offers some great, creative, scenic, and most importantly, tried and true bicycle touring maps.

One of my favorite stops to find bicycle routes through unfamiliar cities, in particular, as well bicycle touring maps in general is at a community-driven free website called Bikely.com. This website has bicycle touring maps from all over the world contributed by users with comments and details, thus making it an easy way to get an authoritative view of what to expect and encounter on that particular bicycle route. Instead of being a website for bicycle touring maps that go long distances, however, this is my choice of the bike route websites for learning how to navigate in bike-friendly ways through major and minor cities throughout the United States and beyond. As one of my favorite smaller-scale bike route websites, I go to Bikely.com when I am planning a larger trip to look through suggested bicycle routes that have been contributed, oftentimes, by people that live in the area or city they are writing about. If you are looking at one of the longer, or even cross-country bicycle touring maps, this would be a good place to go if you're planning to veer off course for a city visit so you can get the low-down on the best bicycle routes in the area before you're back on track with your larger quest. If you like this website devoted to bicycle touring maps but want a more international focus, a similar website is called wheretocycle.com and is the same idea but with a more global and long-trip concentration.

For the most adventurous touring cyclist looking for bicycle touring maps and bicycle routes that go way out of the way, the best idea is to not necessarily to find straight bike route websites, but to delve into topographic and other maps that explore terrain rather than other factors such as roads. These maps are often available on the U.S. Geological Survey website and can be found printed form at the GTR Mapping website which does not provide strict bicycle routes, but rather offers an excellent view of the terrain and topographic features of a given area. They do have maps specifically geared toward those involved in any kind of recreation, and do have an emphasis on the Rockies and other mountainous areas in the United States. This is absolutely a plan for a DIY bicycle touring map that pushes the boundaries.

Even if you are not planning a long bicycle tour or don't have a great deal of need for long bicycle touring maps in the United States or abroad, it is one heck of a lot of fun to see how easy and hassle-free it can be to hop on a bike-friendly road and pedal into oblivion. Many of these sites are also fun to read and then take to Google Earth so you can get a satellite picture of the kind of terrain and towns you will be passing through.