Getting ready

Man, there's a lot of stuff that has to be taken care of before a trip like this.  It's not like you can just throw your camping crap in your bike bags and take off.  The grass still has to be cut and the bills still have to be paid while you're gone. There's a bunch of other boring stuff too but I won't torture you with that.  Plus you have to keep physically training right up to the day you leave.  Believe me there is no down time in the weeks and months preceding a 5,000 mile bike trip.  By lift off (in this case May 15th) you're so tired of messing with the nitpicking details you can't wait to get on the bikes and ride off into the sunset (or sunrise in this case).
 By the way, our original route was going to be generally northeast of our home state of Kansas and on to Meat Cove on Cape Breton Island in Canada.  Then we were going to turn around and take a different route home.  We scrubbed that after looking at the possible routes through all the densely populated areas east of the Mississippi River and chickened out.  We stayed in Meat Cove at the end of our 2001 trans Canada tour and we'd love to see it again but we decided that maneuvering a 90 pound bike at 10 MPH through heavy traffic day after day would be a monumental buzz kill.
Here's our route as it stands now in case you don't know:  we'll leave Kansas, go west and north and ride through the western half of Nebraska to Fort Robinson in the extreme NW part of that state.  We may spend a day or two there.  Then north out of Nebraska through the Blackhills of South Dakota to Belle Fourche SD where we'll turn  NW and ride on Highway 212 through the extreme NE corner of Wyoming.  From there we'll ride diagonally (mostly) NW through Montana to Sweet Grass Montana on Highway 15 and then enter into the Canadian Provence of Alberta.  We'll ride north to Lethbridge Alberta and then turn west and pedal over the continental divide into British Columbia.  We'll wind our way through the Canadian Rockies for a few kilometers on highway 3 to Kingsgate B.C. where we'll reenter the U.S. into Idaho.  We'll ride south down the skinny part of the state on Highways 95, 5 and 3 to Fernwood Idaho where we'll stop and visit my 94 year old aunt who I haven't seen in 55 years.  I'm really looking forward to that.  Then we'll turn west and go across Washington  State and down into Oregon where we'll follow the famous Highway 101 down the Pacific Ocean coast for about 100 miles.  When we get to Newport we'll turn east and ride to Corvallis  Oregon.  We'll stop there, rent a car after we find somewhere to stash our bikes and stinky camping equipment we won't need, and drive south to Sacramento California to visit 3 of Peggi's son's.  After a couple day of California Dreamin' we'll drive back to Corvallis, saddle up and pedal east across Oregon to Idaho.  We're going to stop in Pocatello Idaho and visit Peggi's sister Chris for as many days as  she can stand us. We'll leave Idaho and enter into Wyoming again on Highway 30 and work our way over to Green River and then turn south.  We'll enter Utah after passing through the Flaming Gorge Recreational Area and ride to Vernal Utah.  In Vernal we'll turn kinda southwest on Highway 191 and follow it to Green River Utah where we'll get on Highway 70  (yes, they allow bikes on Highway 70 in Utah).  From there we'' pedal east into Colorado and ride through the towns of Grand Junction, Montrose and Pueblo on Highway 50 to the Kansas border.  Once back in our home state we'll pass through the towns of Garden City, Great Bend and McPherson to Cottonwood Falls.  No matter what our schedule is  at that point in the trip we're going to stop and spend the night in Cottonwood Falls at The Grand Hotel.  We were married in Cottonwood Falls in 1997 and spend the night in that hotel.  The next day we'll saddle up one last time (for now anyway) and coast home with a tailwind (maybe/maybe not).
More later.