The cross country bike trip.  Just the mention of it brings thoughts of open roads, sun tans, town parks, and a summer full of nothing but freedom.  In 2007 Scouts and leaders from Troop 845 set off on a trip that was the longest trip in the history of the BSA.  It began on June 11th at the Atlantic Ocean in Maryland and from there traveled 3700 miles across the US over 69 days and ended at Anacortes, Washington. You can find out more about the trip at the site www.WabuCycleTour.com

Biking across the United States is a perfect balance between ultimate simplicity and extreme challenge.  We travel by bike with no support vehicles so everything we need is in paniers on our bike.  We try to bike between 60 and 70 miles a day and every night we stop in town parks where we sleep in the town pavilion or next to the fire station. 

After riding 70 relaxing miles through the mountains of the Appalachians, the corn fields of Iowa, the desert of Montana, or the Cascades of Washington we spent our time exploring small town America first hand.  We would swim in the town pool, play basketball with the local high school team, have a cook out at the town preacher's house, or check out the little league team. 

We get up early in the morning, sometimes in the 5am range so that we can get in plenty of miles before the 100 degree heats bear down or before the headwinds blast into our faces at 20+ miles per hour.  It was always nice to find a great lunch spot, sample the local diner, then see what we could get into in town for a couple hours before hitting the road again, sometimes it was a rodeo, sometimes a dirt track drag race, but more often it was a great nap on lush green grass in the shade of an ancient hardwood.

As we made our way across the US our group became very tight as we overcame challenges together, laughed absurdly at the dinner table, and together enjoyed the experience of a lifetime.  Ten weeks later we raced down the est face of the Cascades and landed in the Pacific Ocean after ten weeks on the road.  Flying home was surprisingly faster than biking and we quickly found ourselves back in the day to day, sleeping in the same place every night and missing the adventure and comaraderie almost instantly.