Quote Originally Posted by hammertime View Post
I did a tour last summer with Cycle America... it was awesome. I did an 8 day 550 mile tour throung Montana and Canada and through Glacier National Park.
Oh, my....did I see you in the lobby and never knew you? As we were finishing up our tour of Glacier, Cycle America was starting theirs. The van was loading up. Hope the rain we got was Mother Nature getting it out of her system.

I do both cycle vacations and PAC tours Arizona training camp. Of course, last year's training camp week was the tour week (50-ish miles per day from city to city), but this year we're going for coaching week. We'll get 45-80 miles/day in between stretching in the morning and lectures in the afternoon. PAC tour is long-distance oriented--completely different than what I've read on the Carmichael review.

Why one or the other? Depends upon what you're looking for, just like picking out a tour company depends upon what you're looking for. In the Feb/Mar timeframe there aren't a lot of options for cycle touring. Hence, we fell into PAC tour. Great support. Great people. I'm sure Trek Travel, Backroads and Butterfield and Robinson are fancier, but I'm not into fancy. I need well-placed stops with water and good refueling options. PAC has the rest of the world beat. However, it did take us 3 years of cycle touring to get ourselves up to the minimum speed and distance standards for PAC (we're old, slow coach potatoes turned cyclists).

In the end, with both options I see roads and areas of the country I wouldn't otherwise. It is just that difference with the training camp is that the pace of riding, for me, is a little quicker and the afternoon will be spent learning about cycling instead of sitting in a cafe sipping coffee or wine and shooting the breeze.