LA to Home.

I spent my last few days abroad in a hostel in Santiago, Chile. While I was there, the weather was a constant 85 and sunny during the day, which after coming from 4 months in Patagonia, was sweltering.

I arrived off my bus to ride my last few miles on my cracked rear rim before it completely separated from itself. I decided I’d just relax and ignore it while in Santiago and get it fixed in LA where I knew for sure I could get a reliable rim.

I found that most people in this hostel kept to themselves, which was a bummer since it would likely be my last hostel experience for a long time. The only social people were the very flamboyantly gay receptionist who wore very very small shorts, a 87 year old Australian who had worked in the Chilean mines since his 20s and a Norwegian 19 year old named Halvaard. So these were my friends for the last week in South America.

Halvaard and I spent the days there just walking the streets seeing the sights of Santiago. My favorite being this mercado in a really rough neighborhood. It reminded me a lot of the Bazaars of Central Asia, ogling the bizarre foreign goods and always watching your pockets to make sure you still have everything.

We spent the evenings chatting with our Australian friend and our hostel host. Typically we’d start talking and then the Australian would catch on to something we said and go on a tyrant about his youth in the mines or his time in El Salvador. Some wild stories that are probably a bit to graphic for this.

I was pretty nervous about coming back to the states, but the transition was a lot easier than I figured it’d be. Maybe because my sister and I arrived at the airport at the same time, so I had a familiar face and was able to default to my childhood personality with her. Still, some things really get under my skin being back in the states. I miss not being able to understand the discussions of people around me, sometimes there are just some things you don’t need to hear.

Anyways, I met Clare (my sister) at LAX with plans for her and I to hang out in the city for just under a week. We were picked up by my friend Liam’s mom Virna. Liam is the 19 year old gap year cyclist who I rode with and backpacked with in Patagonia.

Within the first few days I set out to a bike shop with my broken wheel to consult about a new wheel. The shop told me to expect a weeks time for it to arrive and be built. I was charged $250 and had to extend my LA time by a week. First introduction to ridiculous California prices.

While in LA, Clare and I went to a concert for a band she enjoys called Circa Waves (not THE Circa Waves, she corrected me many times). We decided to go 7 hours early to the show in Hollywood so we could explore LA, Hollywood and Sunset BLVD a bit.

We took the train from Liam’s house to Sunset. An hour or so of seeing lots of homeless people and concrete as we passed by on the train made me aware that I needed to keep an eye on Clare as we walked these several miles to the Troubadour.

The walk started out a bit rough, but we made the most of it and got some tasty tacos at a roadside stand and made fun of all the RHINO boner pills on the ground. We slowly went from this rough neighborhood to the richest neighborhood I’d ever seen. I remember one block specifically had 3 rug stores and the rugs on display were the biggest rugs I’ve seen in my life by about 4x. I’d guess 20x40ft rugs hanging in these windows for these Hollywood people. Very different from the places I was used to frequenting in Asia, Europe and South America.

We made it to the Troubadour safe and sound and Circa Waves put on an awesome show kicking off their first American tour since the start of the pandemic.

We spent a few more days together in LA doing lots of bike rides around the city, exploring beaches and parks and meeting new people.

One of the days, we got to see my cousin Sam who is in LA trying to get into the movie industry. He took us driving all around the city, showing us his favorite spots, taking us up to see the Beverly Hills mansions and the Hollywood sign.

After Clare left, I spent a few more days hanging out with my hosts, Virna and Steve, until finally my wheel was built and ready for me to take off on.

Overall I had a good time resting my bones in LA, getting to see my sister, spending time with a familiar family and having a nice welcome into the US. By the time the two weeks were through though, I was ready to get out of the concrete city and back into the nature.

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I rolled out of LA in the start of April and began my ride north up the California coast. I spent the first day riding the oceanside roads through Malibu and ultimately up to a wild campsite near Point Mugu Beach.

I took a little dip in the ocean before starting my climb off the coast. My goal was to find a campsite in the green grass and wildflower valleys caused by the rain rich winter in the prior months.

Day two in the US kept me on the coastal highways into Santa Barbara, CA. I accidentally did a 85 mile that day when I wildly miscalculated the size of Santa Barbara. I ended up having to ride an extra 15 miles to cross the city and finally ended up making pancakes in a wild campsite poorly hidden behind bushes between a major road and a golf course. Here I realized wild camping would be doable, but a lot harder in California with the homeless population taking all the good spots and the mass housed population building over the rest.

While in Santa Barbara I saw my first cycle tourist in America. He rolled up to me on his Surly Long Haul Trucker with 5 Ortleib panniers and introduced himself to me as Kenneth. Kenneth was quite the character… he was telling me that he had been on the road for the last 20+ years because he realized he wouldn’t fit right into the corporate world. He told me that only two people in this world actually fit into the corporate world, so if you aren’t them, it’s not even worth the effort. He didn’t tell me who the two were.

He also told me that it didn’t matter that he wasn’t in the corporate world anyways, because he was the “renaissance genius” of our generation.

I said “What makes you our ‘renaissance genius’ Kenneth?” and he told me that it was because he could play tennis ambidextrously. He said he used to be all over Twitter and YouTube trying to teach people how to do this, but he realized the day before I met him that there was no point in him teaching this, because no one else can do it. I did manage to find one of his videos though.

Kenneth later invited me to stay at his camp in the woods in SB, he said he was waiting there for a few weeks until the wind switched to his favor to go north. I politely declined and continued to my golf course site.

After my interesting overnight in Santa Barbara I continued on the ocean route and was greeted by two abnormalities in the morning. First being a broken spoke that I had to fix on the road. Second being a planned riding meetup with my friend Max who I met in Patagonia. We rode together for a day to the outskirts of Lompoc, CA where we pitched camp under a bridge.

Max’s parents got him camp meals for Christmas and he brought some of his fancy ramen to eat while we camped and gave me a few to me to take with me when he left.

I said bye to Max in the morning after eating a delicious breakfast at a greasy spoon in a Lompoc strip mall. I got back on my route headed north towards San Simeon and Big Sur. 

I made it to San Simeon a few days later and got to see the elephant seals laying on the beach before their big migration to Alaska.

Big Sur however was closed due to the landslides caused by the winter rains, so I had to make a 120 mile detour off highway 1 backtracking to Paso Robles where I connected to the not so nice inland highway 101. 

The highway 101 detour lasted me 3 days. Most of the land around the 101 is bought up by farmers, so wild camping is next to impossible there since everything is so flat and is monitored by farmers from dawn till dusk. I ended up having to be very creative with my camping on the 101, which is fun. I like to think of my wild campsites as a game I play with myself at the end of every day. On this day, I pulled off the 101 and took farm roads parallel the 101 for the last hour or so searching for potential camp spots. I ended up finding a campsite that ended up inspiring many future campsites across the states.

I figured the best hidden spot within the farms would be underneath bridges, so I found a bridge and came up with one up my best camping innovations – hammock between the beams. A lot of bridges, like this one have metal walls underneath with small ledges on the bottom, so if you string your hammock close enough to that, you have so much shelf access! I had my candle, my speaker, my water bottles, food, everything I needed right next to me while elevated in my hammock.

I continued my ride the next day energized by such a nice campsite and made it 65 miles down the road to Salinas. As I was riding into the city looking for camping at dusk, I hit a deep hole while not paying attention to the road and my front wheel went flat. Flat number two of the trip. I was in a city park when this happened, so I took my bike into the woods of the park in one of few spots that didn’t have a homeless camp and I started working on my bike.

25 minutes or so later, still struggling to get my patches to stay on my tube, I heard a rustling in the woods by me and a man emerged and came up to me. He was holding a 24 pack of Budweiser, two hostess cake boxes and was clearly homeless. He walked up to me and looked at my situation and raised his hand to me to give me a fist bump. I fist bumped him and he said “Hey man, my name is Manuel.”

I said “Hey Manuel, I’m Adam.”

Manuel held out his box of Buds and told me I looked like I needed a beer. I said I did and he insisted I take at least three Budweisers and one of his hostess cake boxes. I thanked Manuel for his kindness and he walked away. As he was leaving I noticed his house arrest anklet, which didn’t surprise me after seeing his teardrop tattoos while we chatted. 

I did not get my flat fixed that night and ended up going to sleep in the homeless park drinking beers in my hammock about 50 ft away from Manuel’s tent.

In the morning I found a spare tube on my bike that I failed to find the night before and I rolled off again with ease towards Santa Cruz.

In Santa Cruz I stayed with friends of Liam and Chloe who attend UC Santa Cruz. They weren’t able to secure housing on campus, so instead the four of them shared a beachside apartment. It was an amazing setup. I stayed there for two nights doing some tours of the city and hanging out at the beach.

While I was in SC I was also able to visit my mom’s childhood home where she was brought back to as a baby and lived in until the age of 4.

Before leaving SC, I stopped into the coffee shop that one of my hosts worked in and she gave me a free coffee and four day old almond croissants and one overnight oats to give me some energy as I continued north against the 25mph coastal headwinds.

Luckily this time I had an excuse to get off the ocean and out of the headwinds, because I was going north east into the redwood hills south of San Francisco to visit my grandparents friends Kitty and Keith in Redwood City, CA.

Coming off of the headwinds was a godsend, climbing these redwood hills was also so beautiful and nice and cool. There were so many clear creeks while I was passing through these forests of majestic trees with almost no traffic on the roads.

After a few hours of listening to good music and riding through majestic hills, I started to notice the consequences of this last rainy winter in California. When I got to the top of the mountain, I started descending towards Redwood City and when I got about halfway down the mountain there was a huge fence blocking off the roads that said “NO CARS, NO BIKES PAST THIS POINT”.

Of course this was one of my steepest descents in a long time, so I tried to see if I could get around it, but in the end I had to spend a half hour climbing back up what I descended in five minutes.

So I continued for the second descent option. Halfway down, same thing. So I went back up and did it again and finally got a clear shot into Redwood City on a beautiful narrow winding road full of day riders.

I arrived in Redwood City after a long but beautiful day of climbs to see my first familiar faces in two years. They welcomed me in with a hug and showed me to their guest room in the house they had just built. They moved to CA 7 years ago after their retirement in Minnesota and decided to build a house in Redwood City last year to be closer to their daughters who work at Stanford University. They were telling me about all of California’s building regulations on new houses and how you need to have a certain amount of solar powered energy in the house to comply with the government’s new rules. Some pretty interesting advancements from California.

I had a nice overnight with Kitty and Keith. They took me on a tour of Redwood City and we walked around the Stanford Campus.

I left the next morning with San Francisco in my sights. Another connection for a place to stay through Chloe and Liam. This time it was an RA in the San Francisco State University dorms with a guy named Kyle, whom Chloe had met only one time for a few minutes, but thought we’d get along. So she messaged him and he was happy to host me. 

I planned to stay two nights in San Francisco, but ended up getting along well with Kyle and really enjoying SF, so instead I stayed for 6 days.

In this time I did some bike exploration of the city and went on a several hour walking tour with Kyle through Golden Gate Park and across the whole city of San Francisco, on which we saw the testing of self-driving taxis, so tons of cars with no one in them would drive by. On one of the evenings out with Kyle’s SFSU friends, we were discussing the SFSU 5K that would be taking place in the morning that they were all doing, and as it turns out Kyle and I have the same shoe size, so I said I’d try to run it too.

I hadn’t run once on my whole trip, so I hoped for a 22 min 5k, but I ended up getting 3rd place with a 19 flat. It felt so good having my biking muscles run me across that finish line, but the several following days of barely being able to walk were not as fun.

On the last night in SF, we decided to go camping in the Marin Headlands just across the Golden Gate Bridge. We left in the afternoon and after a walk across the bridge and up into the hills, we made it to camp just before sunset.

I left San Francisco the next morning after a hike off the hills and a bus ride back to campus. I had a peaceful ride starting around 1PM and cycling 30 miles to 5PM for an easy first day back on the saddle. But that night, tragedy struck….

I pulled into my wild campsite in Davis, CA that evening and as I started to drift to sleep my hammock that survived almost two years with me ripped right in two under my butt. I engraved a little RIP HAMMOCK into my candle that evening as I fell asleep with my sleeping pad on the ground.

From Davis, I continued north with the next destination being Willits 4-5 days ahead of me. Willits is where my second cousin Jennifer, who I’d only met once briefly as a kid, lives, so I was in communication with her to meet up and spend a few days at her place in town.

After SF is when I started noticing the trees getting a lot bigger as I headed north towards the famous redwood regions of CA. I had a few peaceful days on the coast as I rolled towards Willits. The wind had died down significantly and the road had a solid mix of coastal riding and inland forest riding which is ideal for me because I could swim(shower) in the cold ocean and ride a bit to get inland to beautiful forest wild camping in the outskirts of the redwoods in these incredible old growth forests. One realization I had while riding into the redwoods and the old growth forests in CA is that even though I’ve seen so many unforgettable landscapes around this world, there is still so much that remains out there for me to see. This was my first time seeing this kind of old growth forest in person with trees that are thousands of years old that just tower above you, or decomposing trees with many new plants using them as a base to grow out of. 

Between SF and NorCal I was averaging 30-40 mile days because I couldn’t get myself to ride any faster through them. My goal was to cover some ground over a few hours in the day and spend my afternoons tucked out of sight from the road exploring the giant forests. One specific campsite that I loved between SF and Willits was this old road that hadn’t been traveled on in at least 100 years. You could barely tell it was once a road, because it was completely overgrown and had fallen trees hanging over it. It was also blocked off by CalTrans with a large metal gate. I just took my bags off my bike and lifted everything over the gate and set up my cowboy camp (sleeping under the stars without a tent) in between two patches of the biggest clovers I’d seen in my entire life. The camp site was covered in banana slugs and was located on the upper lip of a ravine that dipped down a hillside covered with trees and ferns down into an untouched, clear, cold stream where I collected my cooking water for the night.

I left the campsite that morning and made my way to Willits to meet Jennifer. I arrived at noon because I misread her text telling me she’d be home after 3 as telling me to arrive before 3. Because of this I spent my afternoon reading the local Willits paper while sitting next to a large creek in the forested hills just outside of town. 

It was a hot day, so I decided to swim in the river. While swimming I came across what I thought to be fish eggs, but I later found out were frog eggs.

At 3 o’clock I met Jennifer outside her house. She had just moved into a few days earlier. We sat down and started talking and we ordered some pizza. She broke out a bottle of wine called Blind Justice that her friends bought her as a gag gift (her last name, and my middle name is Justice and she’s blind).

Jennifer is a teacher and IT lady at the Ukiah Community College about an hour out of town working with the disability center there. So we spent a few days hanging out in town together. I got to have some relaxing days staying home alone in Willits just resting my legs from all those hilly, windy coastal routes and we got to know each other in the afternoons and evenings those few days. We have the first ever Justice family reunion this August, so I’ll get to see her and all my Justice uncles in a few weeks.

Getting back on the road after a few days in Willits, I was excited to get into the redwoods. Willits calls themselves the “Gateway city to the redwoods” (one of dozens of California cities to call themselves that). So I made it to the famous Avenue of the Giants by the end of my first day out of Willits. I’d seen photos of the road before, but it is so different seeing those trees in person. Thinking that plants can be that massive is so hard to wrap my head around. I found a few trees that I took my whole bike and myself INSIDE OF for some lunch breaks. My favorite memory of the avenue was when I made it into Humboldt County and had my first wild campsite.

It was a bit of a risky spot since it was just off private land owned by a Y camp, but I was technically 50 feet into state land, so I think it was legal. Also quite a bit of homeless and territorial pot farmers in that area. But I got amazing cover because my camp was situated between 3 redwood trees that had fallen over making 3 walls right next to each other. Every tree was a foot taller than I was, so I was hidden from the road. I could climb up onto these fallen trees and walk 500 feet away from camp solely walking on the bodies of fallen trees and hopping from tree to tree walking deeper and deeper into the forest. I was also positioned right off another beautiful, crystal clear river which I jumped into off of the trunk of another redwood that was hanging over the river. I swam in this strong river and let it pull me downstream a ways as the water took all the road grit off my body and got me feeling nice and clean and re-energized after riding in a hot sunny day for hours.

On the Avenue of the Giants I continued my 30-40 day average just slowly rolling along and allowing myself to absorb and appreciate the world around me and the perfect California weather. 

After 4 days riding in the redwoods I made it to Eureka and Arcata and stayed in Arcata with the parents of one of the girls I stayed with in Santa Cruz. They were wonderful hosts and became good friends. Their names were Ted and Katie. Ted was a bat biologist and Katie a nurse. They had spent a lot of time backpacking many of the same countries I had just cycled in when they were younger. We had lots of similar India, Nepal and Thailand stories that we shared with each other and they were very excited to host a cycle tourist. I may have convinced them to become WarmShowers hosts as well. They took me hiking in the nature parks in Arcata an gave me a little tour or the college campus in town and the downtown square and they took me to the beach in town. I stayed with them for two days before they went to their cabin in California’s Trinity Alps. They let me stay one extra day while they were gone because the weather forecasted rain and headwinds. 

Before leaving they gave me some maps of NorCal and Oregon and helped me with some route recommendations to continue north and avoid the snowy early May roads in the Oregonian mountains. They also got me one last host in Medford Oregon with the mom of their neighbors daughter in law. So when I stayed with that lady I knew her from a crazy string of connections starting with Chloe, a friend I made in South America, who had me stay with her friends in Santa Cruz, who connected me with their parents in Northern California, who then connected me with their neighbor’s daughter in law’s mom in Oregon. I love the connections gained from the road.

One last thing they organized for me unintentionally was they invited some of their old travel buddies and still close friends T and Marnin over for dinner who were also very interesting folks to meet. T worked at the local gardens mentoring people and helping upkeep her plants in the greenhouse, and Marnin works for the parks service in CA. I was complaining to them about my sleeping pad that had so many holes I had to fall asleep in 15 minutes or blow it up again. And I was not going to shell out another 50 bucks for a sleeping pad since I was so close to home. Marnin came over later and gave me one of his Big Agnes sleeping pads that he didn’t use very much and he gave it to me to take on my trip. It was such a nice gesture and saved me so many uncomfortable nights. This Big Agnes pad lasted the longest of any of my pads without getting a hole. Pad 1 by Nemo gave me two nights without a hole. Pad two by Quencha gave me about 1 month. Pad 3 by NatureHike that I bought in Uzbekistan gave me 3 months and I patched it over and over again to last one uncomfortable year because I didn’t want to spend more money on expensive pads that would just get holes again. Pad 4 by Big Agnes from Marnin gave me 4 months and counting. I even slept on it last night. I’m at home now and it’s still nicer than my bed!

When I left Arcata, I took the roads recommended by Ted, Katie, T and Marnin and they were incredible! Day one took me out of the redwoods along this deep clear river that the forest service deemed clean enough to drink and I found a wild site right next to it. Day two took me to Medford continuing along the river and I stayed in the yard of my host which was a funny situation because we were both confused about how we connected, but didn’t really care and just talked and played board games. A fun night with a kind of stranger.

From Medford I reached out to my Great Uncle Ralph who I had also never met, but lived just north of Bend, Oregon in Sisters. I told him I’d be in town in about a week and we were both excited to get to know each other. 

I expected the ride to Bend to take a week since it went over the still snow covered Cascade mountains and I hadn’t really climbed mountains for about a month and a half since Patagonia.

What I didn’t account for was how easy American mountain climbing is for me now. I’m not trying to lessen any accomplishments of American cycle tourists crossing the Rockies. When I first crossed the Rocky Mountains when I rode them at 14 it was one of the hardest rides I’d done. It just does not compare at all to the challenges of the steep, poorly maintained, high elevation mountain rides across Asia. The US road system is so well built over the mountains. The pavement is perfect and gradual, so after my training crossing the Himilayas or the Tian Shan’s or whatever I did in Asia, this was a lot easier of a ride for me. I ended up crossing the cascades to Bend in 3 days with 2 campsites on top of 6ft (1.8m) of snow. One of my snow sites was in a forest that had burned, so there was plenty of easy firewood and I was completely alone, besides bears and lions, which I did see footprints of in one of my sites that was just outside of Cougar, Oregon. So I grabbed a bunch of wood and had a warm campfire in my cold site. Slowly watching my fire melt itself into a firepit of snow. I was so excited to have a snowy campsite. As a Minnesota boy who grew up waiting for the next winter so I could ski, winter camp and build snow forts, I missed winter and snow SO MUCH. It felt so good to have this little taste of winter in those high elevations.

From my snow camp at the peak of the cascades, I rode down at 7AM and started towards Bend hoping to get there the next day. I ended up taking advantage of my first day in over a month that wasn’t hilly or windy and just riding the slight downhill the full 105 miles into Bend. I wild camped on a hill just outside of the city and shared my camp with a few deer that came through.

I showed up at Ralph’s house the next morning. I planned a 1-2 night stay with Ralph and his wife Linda, but ended up with another close connection to them and stayed for four nights instead. They were very excited to take me on excursions around Bend and Sisters on hikes and some swimming. We went and saw the documentary Wild Life about Doug and Kris Tompkins’ conservation efforts in Patagonia which was an amazing film, especially after just being in that part of the world. We went out in Bend to celebrate to late birthday of one of their close friends. It was my first time having fancy sushi and it was so delicious! I need to make some money so I can afford eating that again. We also visited some cool bars and cigar bars in downtown that were apart of this business that converts old buildings into restaurants and hotels, so this one was a converted old catholic school that was now a restaurant, bar, cigar bar and hotel.

It was strange feeling such a close connection to Ralph and Linda after just a few days with them, since I had never met them before and knew I wouldn’t see them for a while since they live in Oregon. But I’m still in close contact with them and hope to have them in MN or have me go back out to Oregon, preferably number two so I can get some mountains in too.

I left Bend after a great week getting to know my Aunt and Uncle. I started making my way east towards home and in the direction of the winds. Finally having the winds in my favor for the first time in years. 

As I started east, I started planning a visit from my dad, sister and our close family adventure friend Aria to meet me a week or two later down the road in Idaho.

Oregon was a very interesting state because the landscape was so frequently changing. I felt like I was on the edge of my saddle waiting for the next abrupt change of landscape into something completely different and beautiful. Oregon started off with the end of the redwoods and those clear rivers, it changed to mountains and snow, then changed to more high desert as I left Bend. After a few days riding the hot, desolate high desert and watching the pronghorns run around the open plains, the landscape changed to deep river valleys with rock towering around me formed thousands of years ago from volcanic lava deposits. Closer to the border of Oregon and Idaho was mostly farm country and rivers. Not the greatest for wild camping since it was mosquito season and I had to stay by the rivers since it’s very challenging to camp on farmlands.

My last week in Oregon was good and bad riding at the same time. The valleys I was riding in were beautiful with the snowy mountain views behind me, there were tons of cycle tourists because I was on Adventure Cycling’s TransAm route, the pavement was wonderful, minimal traffic, scenic byways, and cold rivers. Okay it was actually really great now that I think of all these things I’m listing. I had only 3 complaints. Lots of the land was privately owned, so camping was a challenge, it was hot and there weren’t many trees offering shade and lastly I had so many close calls almost stepping on huge snakes and I do not like snakes, so I was always a bit nervous pedaling through those tall grasses trying to find a camp spot.

After my week of riding nice roads and not fighting winds I rolled into Boise, Idaho and met my dad, sister and Aria all ready for a week of riding with me across Idaho. We spent a night in town with our friend Dylan who lives in Boise. We met Dylan on our family cycle tour across the US and I had stayed with him one other time in 2020 when I was taking advantage of cheap COVID flights and I flew to Idaho with two friends to do a week long backpacking trip in the Sawtooth mountains with whoevers parents would let them fly with the crazy trip kid during COVID.

Dylan connected me with some aspiring cycle tourists in Boise who were looking for tips on cycle touring as they were planning a trip from Alaska to Boise, so I met up with Anna at a Boise coffee shop and talked biking. Anna and Hope just embarked on their journey and are now in Alaska, so if you’re looking for some more cycle tourists to follow now that I’m done, check out bike.wyld on instagram to see their month trip home.

I left Boise with my new cycling crew, Clare, Aria and Dad and put my panniers into the Sprinter van. We started north unloaded with our Sag Wagon following behind. We decided we wanted to make it to the border of Montana in the week we had together. An ambitious goal, but with the three of them swapping sag drivers and me with no bags, it was doable.

The Idaho ride was stunning! We spent 5 days riding through the Sawtooth mountains from Boise to Wisdom, Montana. We were riding up and down over 7000-10000 ft mountain passes every day through snow, rain, and heat. I pushed my wild camping agenda on them and we ended up Van camping in national forest lands and BLM lands.

We had so many beautiful camp spots in those mountains. One in the Frank Church Wilderness of No Return, one off of some natural hot springs, one off a creek in national forest land where we heard the yipping of coyotes all around the forest in the evening. We did a little evening hike looking for coyotes until everyone realized we were walking around the woods in bear feeding time. I knew that before we left and I thought everyone else did too, so I brought bear spray. Maybe not the smartest idea, but I really wanted to see a coyote.

Clare and Aria were absolutely terrified about the fact that we were in bear country, and I was taking advantage of that and making fun, but Aria and I did get one bear scare. We were up past dark playing cards after Clare and my dad went to sleep and we were making bear jokes around all the BEAR BEWARE signs. It was dark in the Wilderness of No Return and we suddenly heard an animal barreling towards us from way out in the woods and just getting closer. We jumped up and grabbed our flashlight and pointed it out into the woods, then the animal turned away from our light and came at us from the side. Who else arrives but Major, my family dog who we assumed had already gone to sleep, but was out in the woods doing somethin’.

In these 5 days of riding together, I also got a chance to be our sag driver for a day. My first time driving in two years, and the vehicle being the massive sprinter van.

My favorite days of the ride were the hardest ones where we were climbing mountains in rain or riding rolling valleys again in the rain and with winds in our faces. One day we decided to shoot for a century ride, so dad, Aria and I all set out in the morning with that goal in our heads. The winds were a bit tough in our faces, so we made a draft line. A draft line is when we all line up in one line so only the front rider has to take the wind and they block it for everyone else. We’d swap rotations every 7 miles or so.

Aria made it about 70 miles and dropped out when the winds started getting strong and the rain started to come down. Dad and I realized we didn’t need to prove anything around mile 85 when we were cold and soaked, so we all decided to load the bikes into the dry car and make our way to a hike in hot spring a few miles down the road. The perfect end to a challenging day of riding. We spent the afternoon and into the evening soaking in these beautiful mountain pools and while we were up there the weather cleared up for us to find some riverside BLM camping where we all conked out after some camp pizzas on the stove.

Our final campsite together was in a very remote spot in a Montana national forest. We took the bikes over a 10000 foot pass on that last day which brought us back up into the snowy mountains again. We did this pass in the rain as well. We all shared dinner and sat around the fire into the night and did a little evening trail hike before going to bed.

I said goodbye the next morning and rolled off towards Yellowstone.

I realized after having these visitors from home that I had been gone for nearly two years and that I was almost home and that I was ready to be home again. Not ready to be off the bike, but ready to be with the people I loved. So with a mix of that sentimentality and knowing that most of what was ahead of me after Yellowstone was just corn, I started picking up the pace and cruising towards home.

I got 70 miles of rainy riding in on that first day back to solo riding. I ended up camping on the side of some railroad tracks out of view of the road. I was about 300 ft from a crystal clear stream where I went and filled up my bottles. I set up my hammock between some sturdy bushes and got my rain fly over me after I noticed the storm clouds rolling in off the mountains.

I spent the night in my hammock taking refuge from the storm and watching the sky get progressively darker for a few hours and then lighter when the sun started to set, making a beautiful sunset in those thick clouds.

The next few days of riding towards Yellowstone were pretty desolate. Lots of country to roll through. I was only in Montana for a few days, but that was easily the worst weather of the USA for me. Specifically the day when I had 3 hail storms come down on me, and even worse, all that was around me was grass, so I had nowhere to find cover. AND the cars on the road were going 60 miles an hour and spraying me with chunks of ice and walls of water. All I could do was take it. 

On the last night before Yellowstone, I had a pretty special experience. I was laying in my hammock at camp, belly full of pasta when I heard a large animal creeping around my area. I looked into the woods and saw fuzzy brown ears poke up from the brush about 6ft in the air. My first thought – BEAR. But to my surprise and fortune, it lifted its head up to look at me when it heard me move and it was a moose cow just doing her evening walk looking for vegetation.

The next day I rolled into Yellowstone and the park was way more beautiful than I had imagined. I had so many close up wildlife views with the Bison, Bighorn Sheep and Coyotes that were right on the road. I also went past so many geysers and boiling water springs coming out of the ground. The rivers and pastures and mountains were so pristine too being that it’s in such an over touristed area.

I had my second paid, non-wild campsite in the US in Yellowstone, and my first shower in a week. When I booked that site, I found out that in that area there are hard and soft sites because of bears. Soft sites being tents, hard being RV’s, Campers, cars. Of course the next soft site was 80 miles away, because the bears were very active this season, so I went to bed and prepped for a long day tomorrow.

I started that morning early and got a quiet morning ride with only the nature loving early birds. That morning was when I really got to see some wildlife out when humans usually aren’t. Coyotes, bighorns and bison right on the road and some elk in the distance.

I also got to do a half hour descent that morning after climbing back up to the snowy elevation and dropping way down into the desert valleys.

Crossing Wyoming was more desolation just like montana. This time it looked a lot like the pampa in Argentina with the dry bushes all over the ground, but with eerie signs all over, like “Hydrogen Sulfide (H2S) Poisonous Gas May Be Present” so fun to see! And I got to camp right next to those signs.

My last mountains of my trip were the Bighorns in Wyoming. I crossed over the 9,666ft Powder Pass and I rode from 2000ft to 9666ft in one day in the freezing rain and in my underwear. Underwear because the pass started with sweltering heat and then I didn’t want to stop when it got cold.

It poured rain all afternoon, evening and night that day to the point that you could barely see down the road, so when I finally found a campground after the pass, I did not want to set up my tent and get all my stuff wet. Lucky me though, I got a free hotel that night, because no one was at the campground and the rangers said I could sleep in the pit toilets. It was day 1 of the campground’s open season, so the toilets were nice and clean and had air fresheners, luxury if I ignored the prison cell size and the pit toilet next to my feet. 100x better than getting everything wet though.

On my way down the mountain the next day, a car pulled in front of me, so I stopped and a woman got out and said “I saw you yesterday biking up that mountain in the rain in your underwear and that was the most badass thing I’ve ever seen!” so she gave me all the food in her car and I thanked her and went on my way. I told her I had been on the road two years and she didn’t even bat an eye, not surprised after seeing me the day before, I guess.

After the Bighorns is when it really just turned into corn the rest of the way home. I got one more nice campsite in the foothills of the mountains outside Cody, WY where I had 5 wild horses stumble through my campsite around sundown.

After that was really just a whole lot of corn. I got to see Devils tower as I rode through Wyoming. And when I made it back into South Dakota, I was welcomed with some classic midwestern hospitality. 

I was eating at a cafe in Spearfish, SD and chatting with the owner about my trip. He and some other people came out to hear my stories and see my bike and after talking for a while he offered to let me stay in his AirBnB for free that night! This was an amazing treat, especially because it stormed all night long.

Now back in the midwest I was in the final stretch of my trip, just me and Victoria(my bike) rotating the pedals towards home.

I rolled into the Badlands a few days after Spearfish, another amazing national park in the American west, and I was able to get through free of charge on the bike. I had a day riding through that desert landscape and was kicked out into Wall, SD, home of Wall Drug, which I had heard of for years but had never been. Like any other hyped up tourist spots, it wasn’t so great, just a big mall. But I got a really tasty root beer float and I was heavily drawn inside by the billboard I saw 15 miles back that read “FREE ICE WATER”.

I camped in Cottonwood, SD that night in a little ditch out of view from the road. I had done 80 miles and suddenly felt just exhausted and had to pull over. Me two years ago couldn’t just pull into a ditch and fall asleep peacefully.

The next morning I lived the dream of every cycle tourist. A SHOPPING CART FULL OF FREE EXPIRED FOOD!!!!! I got 55 granola bars, 3 packs of off brand oreos and some energy bars all for free. No more snack purchases for the rest of the trip.

And guess what… More rain! I pulled out of the grocery store just in time for the downpour to begin. I started riding towards Midland, SD, the town that marked 500 miles left of the trip. I decided to stop in a cafe in town for the day to wait out the rain. 

When I got there it turned out the gas station/bar was the only place in town that was open. So I spent the day from 12-7PM chatting with the locals at the bar and eating everyones leftovers. Eventually the guys on the bar stools invited me up to the bar and started buying me beer after beer. It was a great day hiding out from the rain and getting to know the locals of small town South Dakota. I gave them all my blog, so hopefully they’re reading it.

I ended up camping at the free camping in the park in Midland.

Now with 500 miles left I was really ready to be home, and because of this I ended up cranking out the last 500 miles in 5 days. I was in Minnesota (my home state) only two days after staying in Midland. It felt so good to be back in my home state and knowing that I got myself there on my bike after 22,000 miles of cycling around our planet.

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, so I got plenty of swimming in there.

The one weird part of being back was that the Canadian wildfires were blowing smoke down into MN, so I could only see a few miles around me and the sun was red behind the haze.

I rode into my hometown, St. Paul, Minnesota on June 15th. Unfortunately, my family wasn’t home at the same time, because I was planning to get back on the 16th, but did an extra 40 miles via a last minute decision. So instead I went to my grandparents house for a surprise visit. We were so happy to see each other after 2 years. They fed me some pulled pork and an IPA after a 130 mile day on the road, also my record distance for the whole trip, motivated by HOME.

After half an hour or so, my grandpa and I got on our bikes and we finished my trip together back into the driveway of my childhood home, where the rest of my family was waiting to welcome me. 

I put my bike in the garage and it was over.

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680 days, 22 months, 22,000 miles, 21 countries. Done.

This trip will forever be an enormous part of my life and will impact who I have and will grow up to be. I left home at 17 years old for a foreign country not knowing what I would find out there, not knowing I would spend the next years of my life alone and not knowing that my ambition of doing this trip would be the best decision I made.

I guess this is the end of the blog for now, but this is not my last trip on my bike, so I will have to continue to update it when I eventually get back on the bike.

For now though, I’d like to thank all of you who have read these entries and supported me along the way. All of your comments on these posts have meant so much to me and motivated me through the hardest parts of these last two years of my life on the road. 

It’s been a month and a half since my trip ended and I miss being on the road everyday, but after two years it was time for me to come home. Now I’m looking forward to my life as a student starting next month at the University of Minnesota. 

I’m hoping that my stories have inspired people out there to get on their bikes for a weekend, month or even year. If you have any questions about getting into cycle touring, whether it be route recommendations, gear recommendations, ways to stay entertained alone, anything, let me know and I’ll be happy to help. Send me an email – adamswanson067@gmail.com

Cheers,

-Adam