Touring - Planning how-to's

I've never toured before, and want to hit up some cities in-state. I'm in Richmond, VA and am hoping to travel to either Lynchburg or Charlottesville or both. I'm not sure how to choose routes, as there are some options that are 2 lane rural or 4 lane rural, some of the 4 lanes being limited access. I'd be doing all this on my single-speed, and am planning on them being 2 day trips at the max.

I don't know if there's a magical way to choose routes outside of driving them and checking for suitability, talking to other cyclists, or taking established bike routes like the adventure cycle routes. Other than that, wind up your google maps (they have a cool feature where you can drag the little purple route marker to wherever you want, and select "no freeways").

I've never toured before, and want to hit up some cities in-state. I'm in Richmond, VA and am hoping to travel to either Lynchburg or Charlottesville or both. I'm not sure how to choose routes, as there are some options that are 2 lane rural or 4 lane rural, some of the 4 lanes being limited access. I'd be doing all this on my single-speed, and am planning on them being 2 day trips at the max.

Get a AAA membership (they are cheap), get as many maps from them as you want along with tour guides and campground guides. The maps and guides are a little autocentric but still usable. Google maps won't give you any feel for traffic volumes or road size which the AAA maps will. Follow the little roads as much as you can and the big roads only when you have to.

VDOT (http://www.virginiadot.org/programs/bk-maps.asp) is another place to start.

Generally, pick the scenic routes over the most direct road. And be flexible. This is an adventure. The beginning and the end of the trip means nothing. The in-between bits is want's important! Have fun!

http://adventurecycling.org/routes/index.cfm

Many state DOT websites have bike maps avaialble too. I don't know if you still can, but you used to be able to get paper ones mailed to you for free from Illinois for example.

I'm here in Richmond as well. I planned out a trip to C-ville last week, but the folks I had lined up to ride with bailed on me. I used a DeLorme Virginia Atlas along with google maps to get a nice, exact route. The DeLorme book is nice and detailed. The trip was about 65 miles one way depending on where you're headed to in Charlottesville and where you start in the city.

Edit: Also, the atlas has topo markings on it. This might help a lot since you are riding single speed. Remember that streams mean low points. It's also going to be mainly uphill to C-ville. You can get small area (county) paper maps from VDOT for cheap. They're fairly detailed, too. The VDOT bike map online is only for a couple of routes and isn't a whole lot of help. Yell if you need some more help, or wanna borrow my atlas.