Originally Posted by bastian

Hi there everyone. Me and my girlfriend have 5 weeks free for bike touring in July and the first week of august this year. We will take the train from California and my initial plan was to take the train to Seattle (spend two days there and take another train to Glacier National Park, start biking down south through Missoula,pick up on the Transamerican Trail towards the Western entrance of Yellowstone, continue down south to Grand Tetons and then south in the borring desert of Wyoming and end some were in Colorado, possibly if we are fast, get all the way down to Pueblo.

Put since we now will use better bikes and I decided to bring my own touring bike from Sweden with low gears. We will bye a touring bike for my girl in California. We are beginning to think about starting in Portland instead, since we have friends there and it's less of a train ride. And just follow Columbia river the first couple of days to get our legs in to shape and then start climbing over the big passes and head in to Missoula and grab Transamerican trail from here and continue on the same route as I said before.
I've heard that west of Yellowstone is suppose to be beautiful. Is there a better route towards Colorado. I don't want to take the road to Salt Lake City and then past the mountains, I have done that before.

I have got some recommendations from Swedish communities but would like to hear from you americans to I know Missoula is a bit closer from Glacier by bike and the route from Portland will be tougher and longer. We have friends in Spokane to and could start from there! Any suggestions? How about campsites, gradient differences and differences on the routes when it comes to scenery?

I've heard about the legendary Montana mosquitos btw!

/Sebastian