spinnaker

I looked at taking the train from Pittsburgh to Maine. It was such a major hassle and took so much time, I decided to drive. Gald to see you are doing a cross country trip from Maine as opposed to a coastal trip which I would have advised against.

perspiration

Yeah, I figured if I'm going coast to coast I may as well start on the East East coast. I would really like to start in Bar Harbor because of Acadia national park, but is it even going to be enjoyable in early Spring?

andrewclaus

I cycled Seattle to Bangor last year and used bikeflights.com with a discount from ACA. It was about $55 to send my bike each way, using FedEx. There's a FedEx facility near the airport in Bangor, which is a couple of miles from the bus station, but I easily got a ride without even sticking out my thumb. Mainers are pretty friendly. That went so well (first time I'd shipped the bike), I will do it again whenever it makes sense.

spinnaker

Early spring might not be too bad. The tourists have not yet had a chance to invade the coast yet. But 1 is still not going to be a treat any time of year. Of course if you head straight west then I doubt it would be much of an issue.


One concern of spring and coming down 1 I would have would be rain and fog. There are lots of parts of 1 that are very narrow and I would worry about visibility. On my trip we really lucked out. Any time it rained heavy we were on a "back" road except for the last day out of Boothbay when it really poured. But there is amble shoulder all the way to Portland from there. It rained so hard it looked like night in the day time. I am glad we had that shoulder.

Not sure of your route but one option would be to start in DC. If you are taking the northern tier then you could take the Great Allegheny Passage to Pittsburgh and then work your way west and north,

indyfabz

What is that?

BobG

Here's a good map of South Station-

https://www.south-station.net/PDF/Sou...2013-01-23.pdf

Head out the upper right hand corner between R2 and R4 in red to find the Dartmouth/Concord Coach terminal. I don't remember any carts being available but you should be able to find an Amtrak Red Cap if you need help to carry stuff to the bus area.

indyfabz- I'm assuming the OP is riding the Atlantic Coast Route to connect to the TransAm.

valygrl

If it was me, I would just fly to Maine, for an extra $150 or so, it would be worth it to not sit for 40 hours on a bus/train and make all those connections, which might also include a bunch of missed connections, delays, and possibly overnight hotel stays (or not-sleeping in crappy bus/train stations while keeping an eye on your luggage.)

but that's me, I'm less price-sensitive than most. It's probably worth running the numbers though - how much time you spend in unpleasant travel vs. how much you would spend to make it shorter/pleasanter.