Credit Card Touring?

There are 3 main approaches that can be used when bike touring –

• Organized tour
• Credit card touring
• Self supported

There are companies that organize bike tours for a fee.  They make all lodging reservations and carry gear for the riders in a support vehicle.  There is typically a sag wagon that will pick up riders having mechanical problems or those that might not feel like riding.  Organized tours are very convenient, but are pretty expensive.  They also require you to adhere to a fixed schedule.  We never considered an organized tour.

Credit card touring is when the bike rider travels very light with no or minimal camping gear.  The rider stays in hotels and uses their credit card for lodging and meals.  We actually thought about credit card touring on the section of the ride I am doing, but there are minimal services especially in Nevada and Utah.  The route goes through a lot of small towns that are spaced long distances apart.  I thought that carrying camping gear would give us more flexibility.  John plans to carry camping gear for his entire ride.

Our tour will be entirely self supported.  We will carry camping gear.  There will be no sag wagon to pick us up if we have any issues.  We do plan to stay in hotels as well, but we will probably camp at least half the nights of our tour.