What happens if you take a rigid, plus tire mountain bike and a packraft and head out for a 10 week, self-supported, solo adventure in the southeastern United States? Well, that’s what I went to find out. Any attempt to describe this in a single post will undoubtedly end up as a long, rambling, and hard to follow work much like the ride itself. Therefore, I’ll provide a brief summary here and follow with a series of articles focusing on individual sections or aspects of the trip.
Route Overview
Section One: Texas Coast Bikerafting Route
The first section of this trip is familiar to me as this is the fourth time that I have done the Texas Coast Bikerafting Route (TCBR). As in previous years, I began my ride from Austin, TX and rode down to the beach at Port Aransas, TX. From there, I rode down the beach to the mouth of the Rio Grande which is also the border between Texas and Mexico. Riding back up the coast and rafting between the barrier islands, I followed the standard TCBR route all the way to Sea Rim State Park near the Texas and Louisiana border.
Section Two: The Upper Gulf Coast
The second section of the trip traverses the Gulf coast of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. All of this section was new riding to me and was not based on established routes. Before my trip, I had mapped out a tentative route through. The route cuts more inland through parts of Louisiana simply due to necessity of progressing past the wetlands and Mississippi River delta, but otherwise follows the coastline as much as reasonably possible.
Section Three: The Gulf Coast of Florida
The third section of the trip traverses the Gulf coast of Florida. I did not plan out in advance my route for this section of the ride, but I did try to scout out in advance as many possible campsites and islands to visit. I had a surprise encounter with a large group of bikepackers which was great. This section also had a number of other highlights with using the raft to connect together small islands. Upon arriving in the Naples area, I cut across the Everglades towards Miami and rode onward to Key West.
Section Four: The Florida Divide
The fourth section of the trip follows the section 8 of the Eastern Divide Trail version of the Florida Divide route. I attempted to follow the route as much as possible and only detoured due to closures of some trails from flooding or previous hurricane damage. These conditions made for some challenging moments, but overall the route does a great job of connecting together the diverse ecosystems of Florida.
Section Five: Mostly Alabama
The fifth section of the trip connects the previous with Tennessee by traversing Alabama. This would take me back to my home town to visit family near the start of the Natchez Trace. While there was a few good riding areas along the way, Alabama presents some challenges to traversing completely across the state latitudinally in the direction that I was headed.
Section Six: The Natchez Trace
The sixth section of the trip follows the Natchez Trace. This is a well known paved route for cycle touring. This was the section of the trip where I purposefully slowed down and stopped at most of the points of interest. I’ll point out some of my favorite spots including historic sites, waterfalls, springs, and haunted areas.
Section Seven: The Road Home
The seventh and final section is the ride back from Natchez, MS to Austin, TX. I had envisioned this mostly as an efficient ride back home to Austin, but found plenty of fun and adventurous travels along the way.
Equipment Overview
I rode my Tumbleweed Prospector and paddled my Alpacka Raft Caribou on this trip. For shelter I used a Big Agnes Copper Spur UL1 Bikepacking tent. There’s many small items that I carried that were useful as well as some that saw little use. Some equipment failures happened along the way and others simply wore out over the course of the trip. I’ll describe how I worked around these incidents to keep sailing smoothly on my route.
Logistics Overview
Some of the most common questions that I have been asked include what I ate on the trip, where did I sleep, and how did I navigate my route. I’ll cover these as well as others in this article.
