Leaving for my second "long" bike tour on Sept. 27, riding Cycle NC from the mountains to the coast. I have ridden several days of CNC on a number of occasions, as well as their spring weekend ride, but never the whole week-long fall tour. The route this year is very nice from Sparta, NC, east just below the Virginia state line to Edenton, and then south to Manteo and Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks. The entire ride should easily top 400 miles, averaging 60+ miles a day. This is a supported tour, so the organizers carry your gear from town to town along the route. I plan to camp most of the way.
North Carolina Amateur Sports
Originally, I had planned to ride a loaded-tour loop through Coastal NC and the Outer Banks. However, when I saw that the CNC ride this year was ending at the Outer Banks, I decided to do that instead. In addition, several of my friends are riding CNC, but I was having trouble recruiting riding mates for the loaded tour.
In June, I rode the GAP-C&O Canal trail from Pittsburgh to Washington DC with friends. This has been a very wet and rainy summer in the Mid-Atlantic states, so we were very lucky that it was so dry. I highly recommend this trip for cyclists looking for a week-long tour that is largely free of traffic. We stayed in hotels and inns along the way, and carried our gear in panniers, but campsites are available along the entire route. Total riding was about 400 miles including our side trips to towns.
We started in DC, parking our car at relative's house and riding our loaded bikes to the Amtrak station downtown. We took the train to Pittsburgh, unpacked and reassembled our bikes, and rode to our hotel in the middle of the night. We toured downtown Pittsburgh on our first day and then headed down the GAP trail, averaging about 60 miles/day. It was just a great trip and we are already talking about doing it again some time.