Post Trip Summary: Details for Future Riders

This blog is about the bicycle trip that Jim and I took on the Great Divide Route and includes the posts we made while on the trip. We have created a second blog with thoughts and advice for other people thinking of riding the GDR, so if you are planning your own trip, you should go to a different blog instead -- http://gdradvice.blogspot.com/

When I was preparing for our trip, I read as many GDR blogs as I could find, trying to glean information. I got overwhelmed by too much content like this "on Tuesday we missed a turn and went up a long hill before we realized we made a mistake, then it started raining and we got cold, then we ran out of food and we got hungry." In an attempt to help others doing background research for their own trip we split off the information useful to cyclists into that other blog.

Post Trip Summary: The Birds

List of bird seen on the trip

We are dedicated birders, so we each carried a pair of binoculars and did our best to find and identify birds while we were riding and while off the bikes. Birding while riding we found to be more difficult than expected and so the variety of species we saw is certainly lower than we would have seen had we been on foot. In particular, we found it hard to locate the smaller species such as sparrows, flycatchers and warblers. We saw four new species that are "life birds". These are species we saw for the first time ever and get recorded on our Life List. It is an incredible treat to see a new life bird and it doesn't happen for us in North America very often anymore.

Birds marked post-GDR were seen between Antelope Wells and Tucson after completing the GDR. Some of these species may possibly be observed while on the GDR while others are out of range and thus could not have been observed on-route.

214 species seen

1. Common Loon
2. Eared Grebe
3. Red-necked Grebe
4. Pied-billed Grebe
5. Western Grebe
6. Clark's Grebe
7. American White Pelican
8. Double-crested Cormorant
9. Great Blue Heron
10. White-faced Ibis
11. Trumpeter Swan
12. Canada Goose
13. Mallard
14. Gadwall
15. American Wigeon
16. Northern Pintail
17. Northern Shoveler
18. Blue-winged Teal
19. Green-winged Teal
20. Cinnamon Teal
21. Ruddy Duck
22. Wood Duck
23. Canvasback
24. Ring-necked Duck
25. Lesser Scaup
26. Common Goldeneye
27. Bufflehead
28. Common Merganser
29. Sandhill Crane
30. Common Moorhen
31. American Coot
32. Killdeer
33. Solitary Sandpiper
34. Spotted Sandpiper
35. Wilson's Snipe
36. Ring-billed Gull
37. California Gull
38. Forster's Tern
39. Turkey Vulture
40. Golden Eagle
41. Bald Eagle
42. Northern Harrier
43. Sharp-shinned Hawk
44. Cooper's Hawk
45. Northern Goshawk
46. Zone-tailed Hawk (post-GDR)
47. Red-tailed Hawk
48. Swainson's Hawk
49. Ferruginous Hawk
50. Osprey
51. American Kestrel
52. Peregrine Falcon
53. Prairie Falcon
54. Ruffed Grouse
55. Dusky Grouse (new Life Bird)
56. Greater Sage Grouse (new Life Bird)
57. Gunnison Sage Grouse (new Life Bird)
58. Scaled Quail
59. Gambel's Quail
60. Gray Partridge
61. Ring-necked Pheasant
62. Wild Turkey
63. Band-tailed Pigeon
64. Rock Pigeon
65. White-winged Dove
66. Mourning Dove
67. Eurasian Collared Dove
68. Inca Dove
69. Greater Roadrunner
70. Barn Owl
71. Western Screech-Owl
72. Great Horned Owl
73. Great Gray Owl
74. Northern Saw-whet Owl
75. Common Poorwill
76. Common Nighthawk
77. Elegant Trogon (post-GDR)
78. Black-chinned Hummingbird
79. Anna's Hummingbird (post-GDR)
80. Calliope Hummingbird
81. Broad-tailed Hummingbird
82. Rufous Hummingbird
83. Belted Kingfisher
84. Gila Woodpecker (post-GDR)
85. Acorn Woodpecker (post-GDR)
86. Ladder-backed Woodpecker
87. Arizona Woodpecker (post-GDR)
88. Williamson's Sapsucker
89. Red-naped Sapsucker
90. Northern Flicker
91. Downy Woodpecker
92. Hairy Woodpecker
93. Three-toed Woodpecker
94. Pileated Woodpecker
95. Ash-throated Flycatcher (post-GDR)
96. Eastern Kingbird
97. Western Kingbird
98. Cassin's Kingbird
99. Olive-sided Flycatcher
100. Western Wood-Pewee
101. Say's Phoebe
102. Black Phoebe
103. Gray Flycatcher
104. Cordilleran Flycatcher
105. Horned Lark
106. Tree Swallow
107. Violet-green Swallow
108. Bank Swallow
109. Cliff Swallow
110. Barn Swallow
111. Pinyon Jay
112. Blue Jay
113. Stellar's Jay
114. Western Scrub Jay
115. Mexican Jay
116. Gray Jay
117. Clark's Nutcracker
118. Black-billed Magpie
119. American Crow
120. Chihuahuan Raven
121. Common Raven
122. Juniper Titmouse
123. Bridled Titmouse
124. Black-capped Chickadee
125. Mexican Chickadee (post-GDR) (new Life Bird)
126. Mountain Chickadee
127. Chestnut-backed Chickadee
128. Verdin (post-GDR)
129. Bushtit
130. Brown Creeper
131. White-breasted Nuthatch
132. Red-breasted Nuthatch
133. Pygmy Nuthatch
134. House Wren
135. Winter Wren
136. Bewick's Wren
137. Cactus Wren
138. Marsh Wren
139. Canyon Wren
140. Rock Wren
141. Golden-crowned Kinglet
142. Ruby-crowned Kinglet
143. Blue-gray Gnatcatcher
144. Western Bluebird
145. Mountain Bluebird
146. Townsend's Solitaire
147. Hermit Thrush
148. Varied Thrush
149. American Robin
150. Loggerhead Shrike
151. Gray Catbird
152. Northern Mockingbird
153. Sage Thrasher
154. Curve-billed Thrasher
155. American Pipit (post-GDR)
156. American Dipper
157. Phainopepla (post-GDR)
158. Cedar Waxwing
159. European Starling
160. Cassin's Vireo
161. Plumbeous Vireo
162. Warbling Vireo
163. Black-throated Gray Warbler (post-GDR)
164. Common Yellowthroat
165. MacGillivray's Warbler
166. Northern Waterthrush
167. Olive Warbler (post-GDR)
168. Orange-crowned Warbler
169. Townsend's Warbler
170. Wilson's Warbler
171. Yellow Warbler
172. Yellow-breasted Chat (post-GDR)
173. Yellow-rumped Warbler
174. Blue Grosbeak
175. Northern Cardinal (post-GDR)
176. Pyrrhuloxia
177. Lazuli Bunting (post-GDR)
178. Canyon Towhee
179. Green-tailed Towhee
180. Spotted Towhee
181. Black-throated Sparrow (post-GDR)
182. Brewer's Sparrow
183. Chipping Sparrow
184. Dark-eyed Junco
185. Grasshopper Sparrow
186. Lincoln's Sparrow
187. Rufous-crowned Sparrow (post-GDR)
188. Rufous-winged Sparrow (post-GDR)
189. Sage Sparrow
190. Savannah Sparrow
191. Song Sparrow
192. Vesper Sparrow
193. White-crowned Sparrow
194. Yellow-eyed Junco (post-GDR)
195. Eastern Meadowlark (post-GDR)
196. Western Meadowlark
197. Yellow-headed Blackbird
198. Red-winged Blackbird
199. Brewer's Blackbird
200. Brown-headed Cowbird
201. Great-tailed Grackle
202. Common Grackle
203. Hooded Oriole (post-GDR)
204. Western Tanager
205. Hepatic Tanager (post-GDR)
206. Pine Siskin
207. Lesser Goldfinch
208. American Goldfinch
209. Pine Grosbeak
210. Red Crossbill
211. Evening Grosbeak
212. Cassin's Finch
213. House Finch
214. House Sparrow

Post Trip Summary: The Route, General Comments

It is very satisfying to have a route mapped ahead of you, and all the freedom in the world to move forward along that path. Get up in the morning, ride through the landscape until you're tired, find a place to set up camp, eat some dinner, and go to sleep. Over and over again. No schedule, no obligations, no worries. This feeling doesn't develop on a one or two week trip. You need enough time to establish the rhythm and sense of freedom. It is similar to the lifestyle and sense of freedom of the road we've had on our month long walks on the long distance paths in England and France.

The scenery is lovely. However, it isn't as lovely as what you will get backpacking where you can get out into wilderness areas away from the cows. None of the mountains were as nice as the southern high Sierra Nevada (our stomping grounds), not by a long shot. So if you want beautiful mountain scenery, get out your hiking shoes and backpacks and head to the high Sierra (or the Wind River range in Wyoming, or Glacier National Park, or your favorite high mountains). New Mexico was lovely, but not nearly as lovely as being on foot down in the slot canyons of the Colorado Plateau. However, as a whole package the ride through all those diverse landscapes was a beautiful and wonderful experience.


About those cows... This opens a rather large emotional/philosophical/religious can of worms. It seems that people have "messed with" every acre of land they can reach - put each acre to it's best economic use, be it mining, timber, housing, ski resort, golf course, strip mall, etc. If an acre doesn't offer any other significant economic value, then you can always put some cows out there and graze it. The ranchers we talked to were extremely nice people who are doing what everybody else does -- earning a living and raising their families. Each rancher and each cow does no more damage than the rest of us do when we go about our business of building a house and earning a living somehow. But grazing in dry climates alters the fragile top-soil and subsequently the entire eco-system. That's fine for any individual ranch. But when you see it on every single acre for a thousand miles in a row -- well it really hits home that we humans have left very few acres of land alone for nature to take her course. This was a very depressing part of the trip for us. The only significant grazing-free stretches were the parks in Canada, Teton/Yellowstone, a section in Gila National Forest in NM, and a section in Coronado National Forest in Arizona (off route). Those sections may have represented a total of perhaps 200 miles in our 3100 miles of riding - not much. Those were precious beautiful sections that we cherished.

Palo Alto, CA

We are back at home. Slept last night in our own bed. We are planning to post some summary information in the next few days -- gear we carried with notes about what worked and didn't work, notes about the bikes, notes about campsites or restaurants that future GDR riders might find useful, notes about transport to/from the start and finish.

But first we're going to wash the bikes and stock up on groceries.

Amy&Jim

Tombstone, AZ

Here at the library in the famous western shoot-out town of Tombstone AZ.

We arrived at the southern terminus of the Great Divide Route, Antelope Wells NM, last Thursday after 53 and a half days riding. We had a picnic lunch on the shaded lawn of the border crossing station and visited with the nice staff at Customs and Immigration and also with numerous border patrol agents.

We are now riding to Tucson, where we plan to pick up a rental car tomorrow evening to drive home. Between Antelope Wells and Tombstone we spent two days in the Chiricahua mountains (Coronado National Forest) which is one of the best birdwatching sites in the U.S. and was also stunningly beautiful. It was my (Amy) favorite place on the whole trip, even though it's not on the G.D.R. We saw great birds there, including the Elegant Trogon!

Prior to arriving in Antelope Wells, we stayed in Silver City NM with friends of my sister - Richard and Stacey. They were delightful hosts and gave us a great sense for what the town is like. We had an unexpectedly good meal in town and reprovisioned for the last push to the border.

We'll write more when we get home, but for now we need to get on our bikes and pedal on over to Tucson.

Best to all - Amy and Jim

P.S. Thanks to Rickson for posting pictures.

photo: Climb up to Continental Divide #2

photo: Stream Crossing