Hold onto your panniers: Florida might just be the best place for bike tourism.
Spencer McCullough made this observation as he biked between Miami and the Florida Keys in the spring of 2023 — and he's the man who knows. That island jaunt was near the start of his trek to bike to all 51 national parks in the lower 48 states, a feat he completed earlier this year.
For whatever reason, the National Park Service in Florida has good accessibility and policies for cyclists: It wasn’t just the bike lanes, McCullough recently told a crowd at the Rapha Clubhouse in SoHo, where he was presenting a slide show of his 411-day, 36-state, 18,247-mile cross-country adventure.
Florida simply felt more thought out and cohesive for people who weren’t in a car visiting its national parks. For example, the state has a “no-turn-away” policy that means that cyclists won’t be sent off into the night if they show up at a campground that's already full. And people on bikes can pay $2 and sleep by the covered picnic tables or on the beach.
“They admitted this policy exists because of drunk driving, and [they] don't want you on the road to get hurt,” McCulloch said.
McCulloch confessed he was surprised mostly because he expects so little when out on the road.
“ Working in transportation advocacy, people [in cities] are like, ‘Look at this little bike lane we got,’” said the 30 year old Denverite. “I'm like, ‘Look at how that little bike lane doesn't connect to jack shit, and it's totally useless in, like, a larger system.’ It's pretty hard to please me.”
McCullough’s previous longest bike tour was just three days before he started the zig-zagging cross-country trip after reading a New York Times article about the existential threat that climate change presents to national parks. He not only wanted to see them before they completely changed, but also, raise the question of why cars are given priority over more environmentally friendly options like riding a bike, given that how we visit our most cherished places is just as important as why.
But there's a huge disconnect: Hiker-biker campgrounds, if there are any, tend to be full during peak months or have to be reserved months in advance, which discourages people from using a bike, which leads to less demand for bike services or infrastructure — a vicious circle. (Streetsblog has covered this issue nationally, as well as shared its experience trying to visit to the New River Gorge National Park without a car.)
“ If we don't do that, then you're obviously never going to get a good bike lane,” he said. “These people just aren't seeing what you actually need and reflecting that back to you.”
The main theme of McCulloch's recent review of his travails and travels was his overall impression of how easily his trip could have been improved if more states were more thoughtful about accessibility.
“People will say, ‘Hey, if I can't park right at the edge of the Grand Canyon, the Grand Canyon's not accessible,’” McCullough said, referring to drivers. “People seem to talk about accessibility only in terms of parking and not, like, gear and generational knowledge,” plus shuttle buses, cheaper camping, and better programming.
Cyclists pay as much to go camping as, like, a huge RV, and we use so many fewer resources and do so much less damage," he added. "Maybe we should be prioritizing travel like that and not incentivizing absolutely massive cars to be, like, driving through our national parks.”
Upon returning home to Denver, he began compiling a map of all the hiker/biker camps across the country and aims to add layers like Amtrak stops. A lot of his trip had been informed through deep dives on Reddit threads and Facebook groups. Still, sometimes the information was difficult to find or outdated.
That sounded exactly right to Tasha Kim, 28, who was biking the TransAmerica Trail when she heard McCullough talk on a podcast and began to use his map to locate campsites.
“You’re so much more vulnerable when you are on a bicycle,” Kim said. “So just even tiny things [like a map] actually make more of a difference, and I think will help more people get out there.”
She noted that Virginia has great bike-friendly policies, while Wyoming doesn’t seem to have similar resources despite having the most visited National Park.
“ My most challenging experience was when I went to Yellowstone. They don't have hiker-biker campsites there, and they don't have a no-turn-away policy,” she recounted. “So I ended up having to ride 100 miles in one day, including an additional 40 miles because the campground that I wanted to stay at was completely full.”
There were multiple instances where McCullough was struck by the lack of consideration some parks had regarding cyclists. There was no place for him to park his bike at the Gateway Arch in St Louis. Same at the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, which had a dog shelter for people who had driven there with a pet that they didn't want to leave in a hot car, while humans coming by bike had to get timed permits.
“They actively ask people not to bring their animals, but they encourage and incentivize it by providing resources, yet you can't provide resources for someone who doesn't want to drive?” he asked. “When I was there, it felt like — I know I wasn't, but it felt like — I was the first person in the world who had ever ridden my bike there with how little they cared and how confused they were.”
