The following is an update from Eyuel Seyoum, who received his Adventure Scholarship award in January 2021 and who has since returned from his cross-country bike tour!

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It is with great joy that I inform you that I have completed my cross-country bike tour across the US. First off all, I would like to thank your foundation for the contribution you made towards achieving my goal. I used the funds towards purchasing a Jamis Renegade gravel bike. It was a great bike for the trip, as it allowed me to travel on both pavement and gravel and was very well set up for lightweight touring.

My partner Adele and I biked from Yorktown VA to the US-Canada border town in Blaine Washington, and then finished in Seattle WA. Along the way, we experienced a full display of  the United States’ varied landscapes in. We saw the  beautiful Appalachian Mountains in Virginia & Kentucky,  the rolling Ozarks in Illinois and Missouri,  the flat farmlands of Kansas and East Colorado,  the snow-capped Rockies in Colorado,  the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone in Wyoming & Montana,  the beautiful Clark Fork Valley in Idaho, and the varied landscapes of Washington, including the North Cascades andthe San Juan Islands.

After arriving in Seattle, a friend brought us a car and bike rack. We spent two weeks driving back to Vermont, passing through a number of new states I just got back from the road trip and am working on compiling slide shows and  the videos to share the different faces and diverse landscapes I came across during the trip.

I am also excited to share with the Flyin Ryan family a story Adventure Cycling Association wrote about our trip after we visited their office in Missoula, Montana. Their office does incredible work for bike travellers and has developed extensive maps for different routes across the USA. We developed our route by combining the Adventure Cycling Association’s Transamerica Trail and Northern Tier. We used their paper maps to find roads and camping spots.

Read Eyuel’s article featured in the Adventure Cycling Association August/September 2021 Newsletter Edition: Adventure Cycling Association Article