We weren't pioneering new western crossings or scouting the far reaches of territorial boundaries. Those days were already long past. But we sometimes felt like no one had ever looked upon the world from quite the same place that we were seeing it. Back then, we didn't have a name for what we were doing. We didn't even think about it.
Today there's a new word in adventure travel.
Founded in 1976 as a mass cross-country bike ride in celebration of America's bicentennial anniversary, it is the nation's largest organization of recreational cyclists. With the addition of the Great Divide Route to its existing network of roads and trails over 24,000 miles long, the Association gives cyclists a new way to navigate the West. Upon inception, the Great Divide Route gained immediate popularity as a unique journey. Maps of the trek sold out during the route's inagural summer of 1998. The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route does for mountain bikers what the Appalachian Trail does for hikers.