14,000 miles and counting: One man's cross-country bike ride through America's national parks
Spencer McCullough’s legs were burning as he pulled up to Carlsbad Caverns National Park on his bicycle.
It was the 45th stop on his ride across the U.S. to visit national parks, marking about 14,000 miles of the estimated 18,000-mile trip.
But McCullough, 29, wasn’t stressing about the distance yet to travel as he lounged at the national park’s visitor center café.
He sipped water, dug through his bike’s several storage pockets for high-carb snacks and thought of the beauty of the country he’d seen since taking to the road in April 2023, at not only national parks but the thousands of miles between.
After his stop at Carlsbad Caverns National Park on a sunny March afternoon, McCullough was headed to nearby Guadalupe Mountains National Park where he said he planned to hike to the Guadalupe Peak – the highest point in Texas. His first stop in New Mexico was at White Sands National Park, after traveling to several in neighboring Arizona.
Next, he planned to bike hundreds more miles to Big Bend National Park in southern Texas and then east to Hot Springs National Park in Arkansas.
It all started at Biscayne Bay National Park in southern Florida near Miami. From there, McCullough worked his way up to the Chicago area, then across the northern edge of the U.S. to Seattle where he began winding his way south through the American West.
It’s a long journey, but the avid biker, hiker and mountaineer was undaunted.
He was more concerned with raising awareness of walking and biking and the benefits it can bring for the health of people and the environment while “decentralizing” human transportation on cars.
“They’re part of a larger system,” McCullough mused while gazing out a window at the sprawling Chihuahuan Desert surrounding Carlsbad Caverns National Park. “We treat them as a tool for everything, and it’s not.”
He estimated about half of car trips are three miles or less and encouraged people to use bicycles or other non-motorized vehicles for short trips like grocery store shopping.
“Start riding your bike to run errands. You’ll get comfortable on your bike,” McCullough said. “Your miles will add up. It’s best to start small. Things are going to take more time.”
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Life on the road
McCullough formerly worked as a freelance software developer, residing in Denver where he said he’s still registered to vote.
About five years ago, he said he gave up a fixed residence, opting to live in a van or campground since and adopting an “alternative lifestyle” to what most Americans consider normal.
“Sometimes I have a real job. Sometimes it's just odds and ends. This wasn’t out of nowhere,” he said of the trip. “The flexibility is great, being able to move your house around on a whim. But it’s also like you don’t have a bathroom. When I first started out, I would get stressed about not knowing where I was going to sleep at night.”
Before his national park tour, McCullough said the longest bike ride he went on was about three days.
He began training for the journey as another challenge, and said he hoped to witness the beauty of America that car travelers usually pass by.
McCullough started by mapping all the visitor’s centers at national parks throughout the U.S. He excluded parks in Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa and the Virgin Islands which were impossible to get to by bike.
He put the locations into a trucking app, and adjusted the route for weather, as McCullough said he can bike in the cold of winter but not the 110-degree heat of a New Mexico summer.
“This is a cool framework for a bike trip,” McCullough said of the resulting map. “Partially because you get to see the parks but also because of all the spaces between these parks. Some of these parks are in absolutely random parts of the country. It fills in all these funny geographical understandings of the country.”
His mother Lynn Glasgow of Yardley, Pennsylvania said she was a bit "taken aback" when she heard her son's master plan, but was unsurprised after a childhood Glasgow said was typified by unique and often complex projects led by her son.
She remembered McCullough as a 4-year-old, collecting discarded CD cases and convincing his preschool classmates to organize the plastic parts and use them in a stained-glass-window-like art project. Glasgow said her son from a young age would rally around unique causes and get his peers to join in.
"From a very young kid he's been off the beaten path and testing the limits," she said of McCullough. "When he has a cause, he's all in. He's going to do what he has to do."
On his bike, McCullough travels at about 10 miles per hour and considers about an hour in the car to be a day’s worth of biking.
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He often relies on the kindness of strangers for a bite to eat or place to stay. Recently, McCullough said he slept on the floor of Cloudcroft art studio.
“It’s interesting how people treat you on a bike,” he said. “People realize when you’re on a bike you can’t just bail yourself out. You’re much more vulnerable and open to the world. People are treating you as the old, imagined idea of a traveler.”
He also uses campgrounds at national parks for a night’s rest and said the hiking and biking community that congregates at the camps is much more welcoming than the typical tourist on a family vacation.
McCullough also gets to experience moments like on July 25, 2023 at Yosemite National Park. He said he was resting on a nearby bench when a massive buffalo wandered up to the campsite and began to walk toward the bike McCullough parked next to his tent.
He eagerly shared a video of the confrontation, narrating between laughs as the animal nearly crushed McCullough’s only means of transportation but instead just trudged through the site without causing damage.
“This buffalo looked like it was going to fold my bike in half, and it didn’t, and I was shocked,” he said of the encounter.
Glasgow said she heard about the buffalo encounter during one of her phone calls with McCullough from the road. She said he also keeps up with a family text string, updating several family members on his progress across America.
She said she's not worried so much about her son's behavior on the road, but of the actions of other people and animals along the way that could place him in danger. Glasgow said motorists could threaten her son as he traverses the country's highways on bike, and that she's heard of him being chased by loose dogs in rural areas.
"I obviously have concerns regarding his safety," Glasgow said. "I'm not concerned about him being reckless, but other people can be. I also know he's the kind of person that takes proper precautions."
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More so than the wildlife that populate the parks and areas around them, McCullough said bike riding offers visitors a better sense of community and openness in shared campgrounds void of cars or trucks that take up more space and create more separation.
He said a site also in Yosemite was designed as a shared campsite, offering a more social experience for visitors and a more efficient use of the space.
“I think that’s something the park service could facilitate but doesn’t offer,” McCullough said. “They could offer a cheaper, shared option. I find at the hiker-biker spots, everyone is sitting around at the table chatting. That might be the culture of the activity we’re taking on. You spend a lot of time alone that we want to hang out.”
Returning to what many consider normal society could be a challenge for McCullough after the trip is complete, Glasgow said. She said she and her son talked about how McCullough will rejoin society after the ride and over a year mostly by himself without the structure of paying bills or going to work.
"When he comes back, I think it's going to be shocking," Glasgow said. "He'll be on the road for more than a year. It's freeing when he doesn't have to go to a job. I've talked to him about his reentry."
Questioning the automotive status quo
National Parks, not unlike the rest of modern society, McCullough said, heavily favor automobiles as the primary means of transportation.
At the Carlsbad Caverns he was unable to get one of the limited, scheduled tickets into the cave to see the wonderous stalactites and stalagmites that made the park famous. That’s because as a bike rider, McCullough is unable to commit to a specific time of arrival. He’s at the mercy of the road, his own stamina and potential weather changes.
He said the Cavern’s new reservation system implemented amid the COVID-19 pandemic, favors motorists who travel in a much more controlled, and faster, environment.
Setting aside reservations for hiking and biking visitors could be a solution, McCullough said, both for attractions like the caverns and for campsites he said are often hard to get for someone not adhering to a strict schedule.
As McCullough traveled to the Caverns he encountered snow in Cloudcroft that slowed his ride significantly, ultimately reaching Carlsbad a day after he planned.
“It’s hard to plan the same way you do in a car, especially with this reservation system,” McCullough said from the visitor’s center of Carlsbad Caverns National Park.
Most national parks are in remote areas, miles from the nearest city meaning a bike ride could take a day or more. But better incentives for bike riders would work toward the National Park Service’s conservation goals by reducing pollution, McCullough said.
“It leaves people out who don’t want to drive,” McCullough said of the policies. “The National Park Service could move the needle. This is a touchstone opportunity to teach them that.”
More bike riding could also advance New Mexico’s climate goals, as state regulators push back on pollution from the transportation sector. The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) reported cars and trucks are the second-leading cause of greenhouse gases in the state, after oil and gas production.
Lawmakers recently passed the Clean Transportation Fuel Standard Act, which was signed earlier this year by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. The bill called on the state’s Environmental Improvement Board to cut vehicle emissions by 20 percent by 2030 and 30 percent by 2040 from 2018 levels.
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“Clean fuel standards not only decrease emissions and move us toward our climate goals, but also diversify our economy and attract new businesses to our state,” said Lujan Grisham upon the bill’s March 5 signing.
New Mexico’s Outdoor Recreation Division was also at work to pursue opportunities for visitors and locals to enjoy the state’s natural beauty on a bike.
The Division announced a $30,000 grant to San Juan County in northwest New Mexico earlier this year to catalogue unpaved abandoned oilfield roads and promote them as opportunities for gravel biking throughout the area.
It was part of a $873,872 grant package for outdoor marketing throughout the state that also included $30,000 for the Santa Fe Century Committee’s weekend gravel and road biking events and $20,000 for Glorieta Camps with Zia Rides’ GloriDays Mountain Bike Festival.
“The much-needed funding will lead to individuals strengthening their connections to the outdoors and families continuing to build traditions of being outside together,” said Division Director Karina Armijo in a statement. “From single- to multi-day events and long-lasting marketing tools, such as printed guides and informative websites, all funded efforts lead to healthy outcomes that fuel our outdoor recreation economy.”
McCullough pointed to the Monumental Loop, a 250-mile bike path that winds through southwest New Mexico near Las Cruces. The ride was described as taking about five days on 76% unpaved roads, with a high point of 5,805 feet, according to bike riding website Bikepacking.com.
There’s also the Southern Tier bike route that starts near San Diego, continues through Arizona into New Mexico around Silver City and Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, before heading into El Paso, Texas.
Those are the kinds of efforts McCullough said a culture of biking could be built around in New Mexico. He said the state has a lot to offer if its leaders will roll down their windows and look around.
“If one more person started riding their bike to the grocery store because I posted enough things on Instagram to convince them to do so, then I would have achieved everything I hoped for,” he said.
Minutes later, he was back in the saddle pedaling down National Parks Highway into the towering Guadalupe Mountains.
Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, [email protected] or @AdrianHedden on the social media platform X.
This article originally appeared on Carlsbad Current-Argus: Colorado man crossing country on bike to every US national park