Beth Knotts and Dorene Pickup biked across the United States, shown here passing the midway point of Route 66 and entering Texas.
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Looking back on her three months riding cross country on a bike, Dorene Pickup remembers struggling against headwinds, pedaling up challenging hills with tired legs and realizing 87.44 miles on one day was too much. But Pickup also is forever grateful that she and her younger sister, Beth Knotts, made this “crazy idea” happen.
“I’m a doer,” says Pickup, who has lived in Alexandria for more than 30 years and recently celebrated her 60th birthday. She admits she likes to keep busy and be active outside — she rows with Alexandria Community Rowing most mornings and has ran the Marine Corps Marathon twice along with several half-marathons.
It’s no surprise when Pickup shares, “I’ve always been a big fan of ‘get out of your car.’ And more so after this trip."
This personal mantra is what piqued her interest in the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, which runs from Astoria, Oregon to Yorktown, Virginia. The trail debuted in 1976 for an event called Bikecentennial '76, where more than 4,000 bicyclists traveled across the country riding through small towns and quiet rural roads. Today, the Adventure Cycling Association supports bikers who embark on this trail and other trails with bicycle-specific maps that share locations for hotels, campgrounds, grocery stores, restaurants, bike shops, rest stops and more.
Even though Pickup had traveled extensively, visiting 47 U.S. states out of 50, including those on the bike route, she thought seeing the country this way would be different and more of an adventure.
She brought up the idea of biking the TransAm Trail five years ago to Knotts, 56, who has lived in Las Vegas for the last 30 years. She knew Knotts was an avid biker, usually setting off on her bike each weekend. The sisters talked about the trip for a few years but got serious one year ago when Knotts realized she had built up enough time to take three months off of work.
Both sisters knew they worked well together and could be compatible partners on the road: Pickup, as the planner to map out their route, and Knotts as the bike expert.
Beth Knotts and Dorene Pickup on their 28-mile ride on the Turquoise Trail from Madrid to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“We spent 18 years sharing a bedroom together,” says Knotts. “We don’t hold onto things and if there was something, neither of us remembers it.” Pickup, understanding they would be together 24/7, says her sister “is the super easiest person you’d ever know. She doesn't have a lot of needs, and she doesn't complain.”
Growing up near Los Angeles with two other sisters and a brother, Pickup recalls their family would travel regularly since her dad worked in the airline industry. Her love of travel, especially for visiting U.S. national parks, stems from this time.
Everyone in Pickup’s and Knotts’ families were supportive of their bike trip during the planning stages, as long as they brought pepper spray for protection (which they never needed). Pickup’s husband, Jim, also would monitor their location with a satellite tracker.
Yet it was their 90-year-old mother, Clarabelle Wolken, who encouraged them to do it “no matter what” despite entering hospice two weeks before their planned departure, says Pickup. Their mother passed away just a few days before they left.
After having an “open and honest” conversation with their siblings, Knotts says, both sisters understood that their mother would not want them to cancel their trip. They decided to continue with their plans and honor their mother during their journey.
‘Not Seeking to Break Records’
When planning their trip, Pickup says they wanted to avoid hot summer days and be finished by July 4th. They started to work backwards from that date and realized that the northwest region of the country could be cold and snowy in late March. They decided to deviate from the TransAm Trail and start from the coast of California rather than Oregon.
They would bike east from Ventura, California, hitting Route 66 and more of the southwest — Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas (just 13.8 miles of that state) — and connect with the TransAm Trail in Missouri. Once on that route, they would continue on to Illinois and Kentucky and end in Virginia.
With the new route selected, Pickup and Knotts quickly agreed that their journey would be more of an adventure to see the country and not about racing or setting any records.
“We are going to be the tortoise,” Knotts says they told each other. “When we see things, we will stop and take a picture.”
She recalls their test bike run in St. George, Utah, in October 2023 when they saw a tortoise in the road and had to stop to take a look. That’s why they loved having Freddie, a pink stuffed toy turtle, as one of their trip’s mascots along with a wooden mouse called Ralph. Both mascots were attached to their handlebars as constant reminders of their goal to explore the country.
“We didn’t want to just bike,” Pickup explains, referring to some bikers who aim for 80 miles each day and breeze by the sights. She and her sister planned to “toodle” instead, she says, and soak in the experience, the people and the culture along the way.
They wanted to take time and be tourists some days, as they were at these stops (just a few of many). Here’s a sampling of their experiences:
- Stood on the corner of Winslow, Arizona, taking a selfie with a bronze statue named “Easy” and flatbed truck nearby.
- Took a side trip via train to visit the Grand Canyon since “it never disappoints,” according to Pickup.
- Biked an extra long route to ride through The Petrified Forest National Park inside the stunning Painted Desert.
- Visited the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City, Oklahoma.
- Met up with Knotts’ son, Jeremiah, in Tulsa to celebrate her birthday and enjoy a Drillers minor league baseball game.
- Made a pit stop at the popular travel chain, Buc-ee’s, the only one on Route 66.
- Relaxed in cabins at the Wilderness Lodge Resort in Missouri’s Ozarks over Mother’s Day weekend, where they hiked three miles.
- Explored Chester, Illinois, the home of Popeye’s creator, where they saw colorful murals and statues of the comic strip characters.
- Absorbed presidential history at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Charlottesville, Virginia.
- Visited “The Cookie Lady” or “The Bike House” museum in Charlottesville, where its owner offered water, lodging and cookies to cyclists passing through for more than 35 years.
“It was fun for us to just do it our way and to take our time,” Pickup says. “It's just nice to have no pressure.”
‘Give Me the Granny Gears’
Knotts and Pickup also did it their own way when selecting bikes and tires. “We had the exact same bike, so that if anything went wrong, we only had one set of issues to deal with,” explains Pickup.
Knotts found the Trek FX Sport 6 to be the best match for their needs. It’s a road bike good for gravel or pavement; not a sleek touring bike geared for racing. The sisters also customized their bikes to add additional low gears or “granny gears,” as Pickup calls them, for getting up steep inclines.
When researching tires, Knotts selected a heavier tire to avoid flat tire changes as much as possible. Unfortunately, Knotts’ most frustrating time was when she had several flat tires over the course of two days on top of torrential rain for 10 miles. After they crossed the Mississippi River, they found a diligent bike shop in Illinois that discovered the leak, caused by a tiny wire from a shredded truck tire.
“I only had one flat tire the whole time,” exclaims Pickup, compared to her sister’s experience. “That's pretty amazing to get across the country with one flat tire.”
Even with toodling and “wind-induced rest days,” Pickup and Knotts biked 63 days during their 84 day journey, which started on March 22 and ended on June 13. They averaged about 10 to 15 miles an hour depending on the terrain and the weather, trying to keep their rides within the 65-mile range or less. Even with their “Slow and Steady Freddie Days,” they still had a schedule to maintain because of planned stops along the way to meet people.
A Little Help from Friends and Family
Even though Pickup and Knotts didn’t train too much beforehand since they’re both active and exercise regularly, they knew they’d need assistance during their three months on the road.
Since Pickup’s husband, Jim, could track them via satellite, he made some of their overnight reservations at motels or Airbnbs along the route. If not, Pickup searched her phone for places. “I’m too old to camp,” she explains. “I just didn't think, physically, I could recover enough that way. I needed to have a bed and a warm shower.”
Facing the logistics of biking cross country, Jim also met them three times during the middle of their trip — in New Mexico, Missouri and Kentucky. They could do laundry and exchange clothes as the temperature warmed, restock supplies using his rented car, or head to bike shops for any needed maintenance on their well-ridden bikes.
During his first stay with them through Albuquerque, Madrid and Santa Fe, Jim took their bags to ease the 20-plus pounds it added to the back of their bikes. “We were hoping to be able to get rid of all of our cold stuff in Santa Fe,” Pickup explains. “That did not happen. We ended up carrying that all the way to Kentucky.”
Pickup and Knotts appreciated “the support teams” who met up with them along the way, including good friends and family who cheered them on those first days, others who provided a base camp and home-cooked meals, and finally sister Lori, brother Tim, and others who were with them for some final rides in Virginia.
Their blog on Polarsteps, a travel app that tracked their trip, was another way to stay in touch with friends and family. Pickup posted recaps and pictures from their days riding or exploring. The comments on these posts were especially helpful after tough rides, she says. They didn’t feel as alone on the road during quiet stretches in less populated rural areas.
Their Polarsteps site, called Dorene’s and Beth’s Transcontinental Adventure, also lists the number of miles they road each day and the steep climbs they faced — including a 6,485 ft. climb on a 70-mile day in Kentucky. It also provides an overview map of their route across the United States and each stop they made.
‘So Much Beauty to Experience’
Looking back, Knotts continues to appreciate her time biking across the country with her sister and all that they saw. She gets reminded each day since her computer screen features a slide show of her favorite pictures.
“There was so much beauty to experience and to look around at, compared to looking out the window [of a car],” she explains. “You could smell the trees, hear the frogs, birds, even prairie dogs. It was enveloping since you were more a part of it.”
Pickup agrees, “After you've ridden a bike like that, driving feels flat because you're only seeing, you’re not hearing, you're not feeling the air, you're not smelling things.”
Both sisters discovered that every state was breathtaking in its own way — the southwest’s brown desert landscapes, the flatness and tall grasses of the Great Plains, the hills of the Ozarks, the sweeping lawns of Kentucky, and finally the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
“I thought it was interesting that every state really does sort of have a personality,” says Pickup. They loved seeing unique roadside attractions, such as the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo. Yet they were also saddened to see some “heartbreaking, depressed small towns” with not much going on through stretches of rural areas, especially in Texas.
Finding clean restrooms and roadside restaurants could be challenging at times. They found Route 66 rest stops clean and reliable compared to other locations, especially in Virginia, where they “learned to make peace with gas station bathrooms,” Pickup shares. Referring to themselves as “city folks,” they were surprised to find restaurants closed on Sunday evenings in rural areas. They’d scramble to find “convenience store” dinners and aimed to get to towns earlier on those days. They did enjoy different types of BBQ along the way, even at surprising places.
‘We Are Really Doing This’
They found that most people were kind, encouraging, and wished them the best, even though many thought they were crazy, laughs Knotts. She could see their point and remembers telling herself, “This is really happening, we are really doing this.”
They’d wave to other bikers heading west on Route 66, everyone cheering each other on as they passed in different directions. They biked by a German ultra runner, Hubert Karl, who was running Route 66 in 66 days for his 66th birthday, explains Pickup, when recalling interesting people. They ended up meeting a biker whose blog they followed called, Crazy Guy on a Bike. Another biker told them about his trek from national park to national park.
“I would say the truck drivers on average were extremely courteous,” describes Pickup when they biked on the shoulder of Route 66. “Even when there was plenty of room for us, they’d still move over to the other lane because you do get a drag off of them.”
Not every state allowed biking on the highway, and their route would accommodate that. They were careful biking on city streets, says Pickup, and preferred bike trails and country roads. They each had a whistle in case something happened to alert the other one. On all of the rides, Knotts was the lead and Pickup followed behind.
When they were away from city streets or loud highways, they could sometimes bike side by side and chat, but they also spent time listening to The New York Times, podcasts, playlists or books on tape. Each had a device that allowed them to do this safely.
The hours on the road could also be meditative —“It was nice to have time for that because we lost my mother right before we left,” shares Pickup.
‘Get Out of Your Car’
If others are inspired by their cross-country bike adventure, Pickup simply says, ”Just do it. Don’t wait.”
However, both sisters encourage fellow bikers to start small and experience shorter routes if they can’t spend months or weeks away from home. For fellow Virginians, Pickup loved riding on the “stunningly beautiful” Blue Ridge Parkway with wild flowers in full bloom. One of her favorite days was biking from Radford to Blacksburg.
Here are other rides in Pickup’s beloved home state:
- Virginia Capital Trail — 50 plus miles between Williamsburg and Richmond.
- Virginia Creeper Trail — 34 miles from White Top Station to Abingdon.
- Mount Vernon Trail — 18 miles trail from Mount Vernon to Theodore Roosevelt Island (30 miles to Pickup’s house in her Alexandria neighborhood).
