USA: Pacific Coast Highway, Wonders of the West Road Trip

Fifteen nights from Portland to the southern California desert, ridden self-guided, taking in the Pacific Coast Highway, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. Bikes are rented in Portland with top-tier insurance included.

The coast comes first: the Pacific Coast Highway south through small towns and Cannon Beach, then the Shasta-Trinity forest and the Avenue of the Giants, a thirty-mile road through old-growth redwoods, some of them taller than a twenty-storey building, with the drive-through trees that American roadside culture could not resist.

The Golden Gate carries the route into San Francisco, with Alcatraz or whale watching optional, then inland to Yosemite for Bridalveil Fall, Yosemite Falls, El Capitan, Half Dome, Cathedral Rocks and the Three Brothers, all of them inside a single valley.

Death Valley, Las Vegas and the Hoover Dam follow, then the Grand Canyon with the optional Skywalk, a glass walkway projecting out five hundred feet above the rim. Laughlin and a section of Route 66 come next through desert switchbacks to Oatman, a mining town where wild donkeys wander down the street, then Roy’s Motel and Cafe, trading on the old road since 1938, and Kelso, where the Joshua Tree album cover was photographed. The Mojave Preserve leads to Palm Desert near Joshua Tree National Park. The price is quoted per rider. This is pure Americana ridden at a rider’s own pace, and fifteen nights is what it takes to get from redwoods to desert without spending the trip on interstates. The one-way shape of the route is the reason it covers so much: nothing is ridden twice, and the climate changes about four times along the way.