It could have been short, long, supported, unsupported, fully bagged, credit carded, on road, on trails, on dirt, etc etc etc.

And what made it special?

From Missoula, MT through Glacier NP and up to Jasper along the ACA Great Parks North route. The journal of that 4 week ride is here.

What made it special was the scenery, wood fired saunas, wild animals, and the Icefields Parkway.

The Big One was my TransAm tour. Big in many ways: time, effort, resources. Just seeing so much more of the country than I'd ever seen before -- people, places, scenery -- made it special.


A couple of week-long tours in Wisconsin get honorable mention. After suffering through 4-8 weeks of southern heat and humidity, a week where the natives complain about temps in the 80s was a break that got me re-enthused about riding through the summer. (We've had a month where the temperature didn't drop below 80F, with dew and 100% humidity 2/3 of that period in the morning!)

Seattle to Mt. Vernon, WA via ACA's Pacific Coast route then the Northern Tier to Bard Harbor, ME then to Philly on ACA's Atlantic Coast route then to Ocean City, NJ as part of an MS 150 ride. Unsupported. Seattle to Bar Harbor was an ACA tour with 13 people including the leader. Rest was on my own.


What made it special? The first day of the trip was the second time I had ever ridden a fully-loaded bike. The first night was marked the first time I had ever slept in a tent. Had a blast and learned a lot about what I liked and did not like when I tour. Also gained confidence that helped the following winter when I spent seven weeks solo touring Andalucía and that spring/summer when I did Seattle to Cortez, CO via Glacier N.P. Oh. And that nice, young girl in met in MN.

For touring I might say my last one as I finally learned to slow down and smell the roses

But a close first/second would be the one I did with my son and brother just because it was great to spend that time with them

NL, Belgium, UK , Norway Denmark, Poland, CZ Republic, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium from the east. back to NL.
and flying home, via SFO.

1991. Eastern Europe 2 years after the Wall came down..

Its all different now with the EU and NATO expansion to the east.

No more North Sea Ferry between northern England and Norway.






....

We did an Olympic Peninsula and San Juan Island tour in Washington two summers ago. It was unsupported and unplanned. We literally woke up one day and drove a rental car to Forks and spent 3 weeks bicycling to Seattle. Obviously it involved a lot of ferry riding.

It was special because it was our second ever date (and my second ever date period)

Talk about going all in

Probably a counter-clockwise swirl (lol) around Oregon. I think it was 3.5 weeks, maybe 4. Solo, unsupported, no hotels. Mostly paved roads, but some fire/logging roads as well. One flat on my horrible flatting tube tires

I guess it was just the right conjunction of no responsibilities (outside of work, but I got the time completely off and didn't have to call in or anything), youth, a quiet mind, and beautiful scenery. The first half was perfect weather. From the coast on the second half it didn't stop raining for a few weeks, and that was a little tiresome, but not completely unexpected for early October.

Don't have a favorite but easiest tour was South Florida 2-day 305 km/190 mile ride. Toted S&S case from Ft Lauderdale airport on convenient local buses to nearby condo & rode up to Jupiter to do personal 1st century. A1A has low speed limit & bike lane for much of the way, lots of ocean views & juice bars to recharge. Surprisingly the only other bike tourists I saw were a German couple riding loaded drop-bar bikes.

My favorite was a tour that I've mentioned several times in other threads. VIA Rail to Regina SK then south through N Dakota and S Dakota badlands, NW Nebraska, E Wyoming, Colorado, finishing at Las Vegas NM, then Amtrak home.

Highlights included three off the beaten track National Parks (Theodore Roosevelt, Badlands and Great Sand Dunes), Sand Hills of Nebraska and a 2 week layover at Crested Butte CO for their "Fat Tire Bike Week".

I enjoyed connecting the out of the ordinary start and finish locations and the Fat Tire Week gave me a fun sub-destination short of the trip's finish with a different kind of cycling. The route also had several challenging gravel road "short cuts" that added variety. Some highlights...

Nice pics!

Switzerland last summer. Incredible beauty, TdF, nice campgrounds, and very bike friendly infrastructure. Really couldn't ask for a better place to tour.

My last one is always my favourite! But if I had to choose one it would be our trip to Shikoku.

Oh wow!
Where was the pic taken where you are on the side of a rock mountain? Doesnt really look like much of a road, or even path...

That's Pearl Pass, the jeep road that connects Crested Butte with Aspen. That was taken on a group ride during the Fat Tire Week. I had my mountain bike shipped to CB for the event.

Also two pics of my "short cut" the previous week over Schofield Pass when I arrived on my touring bike. Had to lug bike and panniers over the snowfield in two trips! And another photo of group ride crossing the river ...

That's like asking to pick your favorite child Of course it can be done but...

I've like all my tours but the one that I found most surprising was "Twisting Down the Alley" (see sig). I called it the "Brussel Sprouts tour" and it is part of my effort to ride in all 50 states. I dreaded doing the ride because of where it was and didn't expect much from it but I found Arkansas to be a wonderful state to ride it...perhaps one of the best I've been to. It had wide shoulders, low traffic and it was surprisingly pretty for a state with too many trees in it. (Any place with more trees than Colorado has too many trees.)

I really enjoyed it more than I thought I would when I started planning it.

Long rides and short rides. Supported rides and unsupported rides. Nature focused and culture focused. One of the things I enjoy about touring is the sheer variety and outlook in some of the different rides I have done as well as "newness" and adventure of doing something different.

Hence, rather than a single "favorite", I'll give you three different categories and my "favorite" for each:

Favorite long unsupported ride: Around Australia in 2001. 8 months and 19411 kilometers.
What made it special: Travels were not too difficult and I spoke the language. I got a real sense of the country and particularly enjoyed my time camping in the outback areas and talking with other campers. I also had a sense of "completeness" in visiting all over as well as a sense of accomplishment in making a full lap.

Favorite short unsupported ride: the Klondike loop from Haines, Alaska to Skagway, Alaska by way of Haines Junction and Whitehorse.
What made it special: Awesome scenery and remote mountain vistas. The physical challenge in crossing the coastal ranges as well as good camping along the way. Interesting contrasts between towns I traveled through. A bit of historical tie to older Klondike gold rush. Good weather the week I went.

Favorite supported ride: A Spice Roads trip I took in Thailand and Cambodia.
What made it special: Cultural experiences cycling through back roads in Cambodia and a sense of how locals live - away from the tourist zones. Angor Wat and impressive temple complexes. Good logistics and organization. Reasonable fellow tourists as travel companions.

Drove thru hilly parts of Tennessee & Arkansas once, surprisingly picturesque. Tenn had lots of log cabins (real ones, not the fancy billionaires' ones) & in Arkansas it was charcoal-making season.

Perhaps my favorite tour happened when a young friend decided to go to an Armand Hammer school in New Mexico. He was sixteen at the time and I was 24. He wanted to ride at least part way there and his mother, a friend of mine as well, really, really wanted some of us older friends of his to ride with him. In the end, the only people who could arrange time off were a former girlfriend of mine and me. Even so, we only had a small window of time, so we flew into Denver, headed north (yes, we knew New Mexico was south of Denver, but we did have ten days or so) and had a great time riding back and forth over the Continental Divide. By the time we got home, I was moving in with that former girlfriend (we later got married) and four years later we ordered our first custom touring tandem.

Oh, and the young lad met the love of his life at that school. She became a school teacher and they moved to Salem, OR and lived happily ever after.

they're all favorites!
and each one has a most favorite bit.

i think the bestest bit ever was riding the valley
from a campsite at lake gunn (?) to milford sound.

back before the tunnel was refurbished....no lighting,
debris falling from the ceiling, roadway potholed and
covered with sand and running water....

so awesome, rode it again the next day.

Had to think long and hard about this. So thank you, for making me remember the good and bad, but mostly fantastic experiences :-).

My favourite tour used the RomantischStrasse in Germany as a base route - a "manufactured" historical tourist route - from Wurzburg to Bavaria, not because it was particularly spectacular, but because it helped me figure out what I enjoyed about cycle touring.
.
It was my first self-supported tour (the previous year I'd cycled along the Danube from hotel to hotel while my bags were carried in a van . I had spent weeks plotting my route, making my own maps, printing them, laminating them, compiling vast lists of information on accommodation & places to eat, because, you know, a tourist route in Germany is very badly served with food places and places to sleep .

I seriously over-packed - my rear right pannier was full of books! I even packed my precious, hard-backed, non-sanitised Grimm's Fairy Tales!

Anyway, day 2 into a 2 week trip, I'm cycling along through the German countryside on a nice quiet road, singing away to myself in a state of near bliss. I know where I'm going, I know how long it will take to get there, I have a good idea where I'll stay. All is good in the world. Then, over there, I see a big wood, stretching off in the distance, a distance that was stretching off in the wrong direction.

Now, I love forests, especially German ones. There is something almost spiritual about them and they are full of history and mystery. "It's a pity it's in the wrong place", I thought to myself and continued on. But the darn forest was bugging me, calling out to me. "I can't go in there", my conversation with myself continued. It's the wrong way! I spent hours and hours planning this route. Look! I even laminated the maps! They're organised day by day with all kinds of useful info on them!"

I cycled on.

"How can a forest be in the wrong place?"

Then I stopped and turned around.

I rode through that forest. For about 3 hours, just me, the bike and Hobbes, the tiger. When I finally came out of it, I had no idea where I was, or how to get to where I needed to be. But then, where did I need to be? Nowhere!

So I pointed the bike in the general direction I wanted to go and headed off.

(This helped me redefine the concept of being lost - I'm only lost when I need to be somewhere and I have no idea how to get there! As a result, I'm hardly ever lost now on a tour )

And that's when I figured out what I enjoy about bike touring - the freedom and the independence.

So that's my favourite tour because without it, all my other trips would have been very, very different.

Oh! It also taught me to get a kindle - something else I'm very grateful for!

Frank

I can think of many worthy candidates, but the tour which my brain is selecting at this moment in time was in SW France, up the Dordogne & Lot valleys from Bordeaux, then south toward Toulouse. The region has a great network of quiet secondary roads with little traffic, combined with gorgeous scenery full of castles, gorges, & medieval villages. There are numerous caves which can be visited, too. Add some of the best food in all of France and it's close to touring perfection. On the particular tour I'm thinking of, we had absolutely perfect weather, as well.

Very cool post, thanks for sharing that.
I highlighted the comment above specifically because it made me chuckle since each time I have read your handle/name, i get the image of Hobbes in my mind.

The last panel of the last strip ever of that comic is very fitting, considering the overall point of your post.

That's a cute story! Thanks for sharing We met at work and after weeks of awkwardness he finally asked me out. I was 20 and hadn't ever been on a date before. Crazy right? Too consumed with life. I had a bicycle but had ever toured. That night we'd been texting and decided I wanted to try touring so I borrowed his sisters bike and for the next 3 weeks we rode around the above noted areas. Luckily our job allows us to take off whenever. My parents weren't too keen on it. Me spending 3 weeks w a guy they hadn't met deep in the Washington woods with no cell service lol 😂 All ended perfectly though!

Yeah, I'm a big Calvin & Hobbes fan
A friend of mine is good with her hands and made him for me. He goes on all my bike trips with me. I'm not a fan of being in photos, so he fills in.