bike transportation on Western Express trail

[chrisk]

I live in Colorado Springs CO and want to do the Western Express trail from Pueblo CO to San Fransisco CA.

I typically just do 5 day trips of only about 60 miles a day, any more then that and my knees start complaining.

When I look at Western Express trail across Utah and Nevada there aren't too many big cities. I can probably get to Dolores CO, but making it ~450 mi to Cedar City UT is a bit too far for me in one trip. I'd like to split that into 2 different trips.

My question is how do I get me and my bike to starting points and back home from ending points ?

I assume that Cedar City UT is large enough to have bus or air service to get me and my bike to or from it to Colorado Springs CO. But nothing in between Dolores CO and Cedar City UT looks big enough to have bus  or air service. Pretty much the same thing across Nevada for the leg from Cedar City UT to Carson City NV.

Anybody know if there is cross country bus service in between Dolores CO and Cedar City UT that would allow me to break that section up into 2 trips, not more then ~300 mi per trip, or have an alternate recommendation on how to get me and my bike to starting and finish points to/from Colorado Springs CO ?

Ditto for the leg from Cedar City UT to Carson City NV ?

I guess I should ask if anyone knows if Cedar City UT and Carson City NV have cross country bus service. It's becoming less common and I have been assuming that they do have bus service, although I haven't been able to verify it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
Chris Kottaridis

[valygrl]

Cedar City is near ST George, I know you can get shuttles to Las Vegas from there.
Carson City is near Reno.
Reno and Vegas both are served by Southwest Airlines, which has a reasonable bike-handling fee.

There may be other factors at play here beyond the knees that make you want to break the trip up, but IMO doing that adds a huge amount of time and expense for travel, that might be otherwise spent touring.  You might even do a cost analysis to see if a hotel-based trip would break even, and maybe spare the knees the pain of pushing camping gear up hill?  Or maybe you could just do 4-days on, 2 days off?  I don't know the rest of your constraints, of course.

The bus is so horrible and time consuming.  It might not even be all that cheap.  Greyhound's web site should show you the bus service info, better than asking here.  Don't count on finding a bike box at the station, even if they say they have them.   

Good luck!  I'm sure you can figure it out.