Eastern Express Bike Route

[Nyimbo]

Sorry, I followed the EE maps but at Franklin Indiana I turned SE and headed across on country roads to make my way to my Cincinnati detour.  After Cincinnati, I turned NE and made my way and returned to the route at Waynesville OH, so the section you are asking about is the section I completely missed.

[canalligators]

In case anyone else (besides me) is confused...

You won’t find this route in the AC pages’ routes section, as it is not an official route.  It took me ten minutes of poking around, then giving up and searching, then following two links, to find it:
https://www.easternexpressroute.com/route-overview/

Once you find the page, it is a good writeup.

I understand them not having resources to fully develop the route, but they could make it easier to find.

[whitebirch]

I'm chiming in very late to give a suggestion for Ohio.

I had a taste of wanderlust this evening and hopped on the forum for the first time in a couple years.

My wife, our then-9-year-old daughter, and I did a cross-country east to west trip in 2016. Our journal is at http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/sixmonthssixwheels.

You say your wife would prefer trails to roads. So did we, and thus we were very pleased with Ohio's network of paved trails, focused on the Ohio to Erie Route. And they're putting real money into building it out a bit more each year. In 2016, we picked it up in Millersville and made it most of the way to Cincinnati on beautiful trails. Some interesting towns along the way, including some Amish areas, university towns, Columbus, and Cincy. After that we did southern Indiana and Illinois into St. Louis. We were struggling with some of our own trip issues during that stretch, but the route was fine, if a bit uninspiring.

Anyway, thought I'd put in a plug for Ohio's trails, as I didn't see anyone else make that point. The Eastern Express route only takes advantage of a few of those trails, as it seems to want to follow the most direct path east-west.

Happy planning,

Rob Levin

[HikeBikeCook]

Thanks Whitebirch -

Ironically I have been looking at those trails again in the past few week. Our original plan was to try and follow the "proposed" Rails to Trails cross country bike route, which still has many gaps and did not easily intersect with an mapped East West route once the gaps started including entire states like Wyoming.

A recent development in our trip plan may have me taking a week out of our trip near Columbus, OH for a consulting engagement. I found that we can make a slight detour from the Eastern Express and jump on bike trails around Groveport that will take us within a 1/2 mile of the airport hotels, where I am hoping we can leave our bikes during the trip. We can the pick up the Ohio to Eire trail right there and ride southwest to intersect the Eastern Express again in Waynesville, OH.

When I found the Eastern Express Route I abandoned the Rails to Trails Route, but now seeing the intersection with the Eastern Express I am mapping out the possibility of following the Rails to Trails Route from Pittsburgh to Waynesville.

Thanks for the link to your journal, I will go over and take a look.

[whitebirch]

Yes, the sections around and south of Columbus are very well developed, and biking through Columbus was easy, although we did it in April and on a drizzly weekday when no one seemed to be around. If you're not interested in seeing Cincinnati, then hopping off the Ohio to Erie at Waynesville probably makes sense.

But... I suppose you could also look at the trail west from Xenia, toward Dayton, and maybe eventually get to Richmond, IN, which has a nice Quaker college (Earlham) and might be a nice mini-destination.  Looking at Google Maps, it also looks like there's a longish trail NW out of Richmond. And then there's a canal trail across much of northern Illinois that looked interesting (Joliet to Davenport, IIRC).

If I were to do another XC route I'd stay more northerly across the midwest to get a bit out of the heat and maybe away from the dogs of southern Indiana and Illinois. We started arcing northerly around Kansas City, but only after suffering a bad couple weeks across Missouri. The Katy Trail was great, but there are also some nice trails up in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Hope this helps,

Rob

[canalligators]

I liked the northern route.  You can cross half or more of Minnesota on trails, and most of Wisconsin on trails.
https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=1mr&doc_id=728&v=6a
https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=1mr&doc_id=2128&v=Dt

These journals are old, there are probably more trails now.  I might find a better way through Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

[TCS]

Hmm.

Perhaps E -> W
   Eastern Express through to Katy Trail
   Change to Rock Island Trail @ Windsor MO
   Rock Island Trail to KC
then a miracle occurs*
   pick up Lewis & Clark @ Weston MO & ride up the Missouri River to Fort Thompson SD
   pick up AC's Parks, Peaks & Prairies Trail to Yellowstone NP

I'm not saying this is ironing board flat, but the first serious climbs would be in the Black Hills in western South Dakota, and that stretch also includes the Mickelson Rail Trail.


*actually, I got what looked to be a very reasonable route between the suburbs of KC and Weston using

https://cycle.travel/