Every summer, the route draws more individuals from all over the world who travel to witness a perspective of America that few have ever seen. Since the route was released, it has naturally become popular among dual-sport motorcyclists and 4x4 enthusiasts made evident by the countless forum entries on, YouTube videos, a Land Rover commercial, and even the documentary film Road Less Traveled. Sam completed the route in 1996 and has since launched a website () as a resource to purchase maps and information for the route. Sam Correro, a passionate dual-sport motorcyclist from Tennessee, developed the route over 15 years as a way to cross the country off pavement with his motorcycle. The route comes to an end on Battle Rock Beach in the moody coastal town of Port Orford, Oregon. Following the footsteps of the early pioneers of the California Gold Rush, the route finally leaves the desert and drops you into the greener land of Surprise Valley, California, and over the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, where water begins to flow in the creek beds again. The red rocks of Moab are the route’s introduction to a long stretch across the high desert of Utah, the Great Basin of Nevada, and eastern Oregon. For 100 miles, the route travels through northeast New Mexico before navigating northwest into the Rocky Mountains and over the high alpine passes of the San Juans. The route travels over the Mississippi River and into the rugged Ozark Mountains of Arkansas before it begins a gradual, straight ascent through the prairie grasslands of northern Oklahoma and the No Man’s Land of the state’s remote panhandle. From the Smoky Mountains, the route follows the backroads of the lush, humid river valleys and forests of southern Tennessee and northern Mississippi. The TAT begins in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and travels west across coastal Carolina and over the Great Smoky Mountains. This is how we went from owning a shop to pioneering the crossing of the TAT by bicycle and how it changed our lives.įirst, let me address the curiosity of every gravel grinder reading this by telling you a little more about this route. We began the ride just weeks after closing our bicycle shop, leaving our so-called “comfortable life” to embark on the unknown. For us this was more than a journey of exploration and adventure. That is, until the summer of 2015, when my husband Tom and I rode the TAT on our bicycles over a three-month period. This route was initially designed by and for dual-sport motorcyclists (hence the name overlap), making it popular among a community of adventure motorcyclists and 4x4 enthusiasts, but relatively unknown to bicyclists.
Don’t be surprised if you haven’t heard of it. Yes, there is a dirt-road route from east to west across the United States of America, and it’s nearly double the length of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. The two routes share the same name, but the Trans-America Trail (also known as the TAT) is a 5,000-mile route across the United States that follows dirt roads, gravel roads, forest roads, jeep trails, and paved backroads. Now imagine the magnitude of a similar journey in the intimate and remote setting of America’s backcountry dirt roads, and you get the Trans-America Trail. The journey occurs at a rate of speed slow enough that you are immersed in your surroundings but fast enough to shock you with frequent changes in geography, culture, and climate. You pass through small-town America, experiencing places and sites that you have reached under your own power. Imagine riding across America on Adventure Cycling’s TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, the classic paved route from Astoria, Oregon, to Yorktown, Virginia. Story by Sarah Swallow | Photos by Tom & Sarah Swallow
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