The long wait for Sierra Cascades Bicycle Route is almost over. The Adventure Cycling Association says the full maps will be available in mid April. An overview map is available online. It shows the general route of the 2,392-mile bike route that parallels the Pacific Crest on paved roads. The bike route from the Canadian border at Sumas, Washington, to the Mexican border at Tecate, Mexico, is the newest of more than 38,000 miles of mapped bike routes offered by the non-profit.

Probably the single most important project for bicycle travel in the United States is the U.S. Bicycle Route System.The proposed 50,000-mile national network links the lower 48 states with numbered corridors running north-south and east-west. The Adventure Cycling Association and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials worked together to identify those 50-mile wide corridors nearly 2 years ago. But it's up to the individual states to work together to create the on-the-ground bike routes that meet up at state borders. And that's the problem.