Route Planning

The Road to Detroit riders will be leaving Chicago on Friday, June 11th, and arriving in Detroit 8 days later on Friday, June 18th. The total ride is 279 miles over 7 days of riding with one day off.  Spoke N’ Heart will provide information for all the hubs on the Road to Detroit about campgrounds and route planning, but if you’re interested in planning your own route, check out the resources below!

Road to Detroit from Chicago Tentative Route and Stops

General Route Planning

There are several ways to get you and your crew from point A to point B. Unless one of your riders is very familiar with the area, you’re going to need some help with navigation and roads to ride on. Here are some tips that Spoke N’ Heart has learned over the years.

1. Which way to go? If you know your destination, you need to figure out what roads you’re riding on.  You can do this using a mapping website like mapquest or googlemaps. Things to note when you’re using these services:
   1. You can choose “walking” as your mode of transportation, and the maps will avoid highways (sometimes this is a check box that says “avoid highways”)  You are NOT allowed to bicycle on most interstate highways, nor would you want to! (There are some exceptions to this, like US-90 through South Dakota and Wyoming because it’s literally the only road.  In these cases, the roads have a wide shoulder, but they’re often still not places you want to be riding if you can avoid them).
   2. You can ride on most state routes, (designated as CA-10 or MI-12) and they often have wide shoulders.  Google satellite view allows you to look at the road, and you can often tell if the road has a shoulder.
   3. Sometimes the information in these mapping services is not accurate! We recommend checking them against each other to make sure you have the right info.
   4. State routes are usually also labeled with a street name (for example, CA-1 is also Pacific Coast Highway), and sometimes the name on the street sign won’t include the state route number. It’s a good idea to find BOTH the route number and the name for all the roads you’re riding on, otherwise you might miss a turn.
2. What route is best? There are often multiple routes to a destination. How to tell which routes are most friendly to biking?
   1. State Departments of Transportation almost always have a bicycle department, and all of them (that we’ve tried, anyway) will mail you maps for free.  Many states have preplanned bike routes that you can follow, and those that don’t will often have regular maps they’ll send you.
   2. Google! If you’re riding between Mobile and Memphis, google “Mobile Memphis bike route” to see if others have ridden the same way and have recommendations. Other website that are helpful are crazyguyonabike.com (lots of bike tour travel journals) and bikely.com.
   3. Off road bike routes! There is a network of off road bike trails throughout the country – some are linked through the National Bicycle Greenway page, and some are just available on stand alone web pages. The bicycle departments at the Dept of Transportation can usually tell you if there are good off road bike trails where you’re traveling.
3. How will everyone know where we’re going?
   1. Ride together! One way to get to your destination is to have a map, and have some people decide which way to go whenever you need to make a turn. This can be fun! Spontaneous! But can also lead to getting lost.
   2. Cue sheets! Many rides use cue sheets, which are usually index cards with the directions for that day written on them. Spoke N’ Heart usually has the daily facilitators outline the route (mileage, anything we know about the terrain or the road conditions, lunch stops) and then read off the directions for everyone to copy.  We usually provide turns (RT on Sleepy Hollow) as well as mileage (3.1 miles).  You can get all of this info from googlemaps. If you’re the one creating the cue sheet, make sure you actually LOOK at the map to make sure that all the turns make sense. Sometimes what seems like a turn (sl L on Crest) is actually just a continuation.  Things to make sure to include: towns you pass through, any times the road changes names.
   3. Sidewalk chalk! If you have a SAG wagon, you can send them ahead to mark turns on the ground. You can also make sure that the riders in the front crew have chalk to mark the turns.  Sometimes chalk can be easy to miss, so you might not want to rely on it for directions.