by Dennis Coello

Remember that wonderful line in the 1971 movie”French Connection,”when tough-guy detective Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) spits out the words “I’d rather be a lamppost in New York than President of France!”  I recall loving it and laughing with everyone else in the audience, even if most of us might have made a different choice.

Three years later, when I was cycling Europe for the first time, I remembered the movie line when thinking that I’d rather be on a bike anywhere on the Continent than trying to stay alive riding across town in the U.S.

Thankfully, things have gotten a lot better for American bikers since then, but they’ve improved in Europe as well.  There’s better signage, little bike-shaped traffic lights specifically for us two-wheelers in some towns and cities, more bike racks and bike lanes, and best of all a population that’s inherently friendly toward cyclists.  How sweet it is not to be treated like we don’t belong. 

But while almost all of Europe is better for cyclists than is the States, there’s one route that is hands-down best, the paved, mostly flat and winding cycle path that parallels the long, meandering Mosel River in western Germany.

Why best?  Well, imagine riding for a week past vineyards stretching up steep mountainsides on both banks of this clean, slow-moving river.  Picture yourself pedaling through summer sun-drenched medieval-looking towns of half-timbered houses, past Romanesque churches of intricate architecture, glancing up from your handlebars to see a castle perched high overhead and, as you turn the corner you hear a happy population of townspeople and tourists enjoying the local wine, or beer and sausages, at outdoor tables around the fountain in the town’s main square.  Believe me, it’s a blast, even if you don’t sprechen sie deutsch.  Many Germans speak very good English.

But a warning: After 200 miles of this (Austin-Lehman Adventures offers its guests choices of routes between 122 and 200 miles stretched over a week-long trip) it’s tough, very tough, to return stateside to your regular workout ride on a highway shoulder and a Big Mac on the way back home.

Let me back up some, to give you a wider picture of the country before I take you to where we’ll start our Mosel trip at the historic town of Trier.  (Uh, that’s “historic” in European terms, which means a very long time ago.  Trier, for instance, was founded,  I love telling this in 16 BC, by Emperor Augustus.)  If you’re like me, I appreciate a place more once I’ve gotten a geographic overview.

Okay,  we all know where Germany is on a map, in north-central Europe.  But quick, how big is it? Most of us know it’s smaller than the United States.  But given its prominence in world history we’e amazed to learn that it’ smaller than the single state of Montana.  In fact, you could put Germany and New Jersey into Montana (though they’ never get along), and you’ still have room for a course or two of der wiener schnitzel und der appelstrudel.  Wunderbar!

Germany is in population the largest nation in Western Europe, yet still it has just over a quarter that of the U.S. , about 82 million people.  However, it wallops us in neighbors.  We’ve got Canada and Mexico, and a bunch of fish to the right and left.  But Germany is bordered by nine nations (Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Poland, and the Czech Republic).  It’s as if the U.S. is a ranch with only a couple other big spreads barely in view across the prairie…while Germany occupies the middle unit in a condo where all the other tenants speak another language.  No wonder they’ve had such a fractious time.

And now back to the Mosel River, in the western region of Germany near its border with Luxembourg.  The river begins in a mountain range in France (where it’s called the Moselle) and runs umbilically northward, to where it flows into the larger Rhine.  More than two centuries ago ancient Rome sent its armies north over the Alps to this lovely forested and watered region, and tried to push beyond.  The “Vandals” kept them from settling for long north of the Mosel, and thus the beautiful river towns you’ll be cycling through became Roman frontier encampments, then settlements, and finally the largest of them true Roman towns with public baths, villas, roads, bridges, theaters, and of course the ubiquitous Roman vineyards, the descendents of which you’ll see today.

All of which returns us to Trier, Germany’s “oldest city,” known for housing the, most impressive Roman construction, north of the Alps.  That’s saying something, given the other Roman structures you’ll see downriver on your ride toward the Rhine.  Pedal or walk in one direction in this safe and fascinating town and you’ll come upon an amphitheater where 25,000 sandaled Romans and Germans watched bloody gladiatorial contests.  Make a U-turn and you’ll pass the huge 11th century Cathedral, then enter a Renaissance market area full of bustle and bratwursts and, amazingly (to me, anyway), turn down a street where Karl Marx was born 800 years later! 

It will require all of your two days in Trier to wrap your mind around such history, and your tongue around the local delicacies, most of which I still can’t pronounce but would recognize instantly if tasted once again.  Then comes the enjoyable river ride through picturesque Trittenheim to Neumagen, a fascinating town of Roman ruins and statues and reconstructed villas, plus (thankfully) all the modern creature comforts.

At the height of the Roman Empire a massive fortification of two enormous gates and fourteen towers existed here, something I had difficulty picturing while walking up quiet streets of flower-potted shops to a coffeehouse just after dawn the next day.  I knew I was treading the ancient Roman Road, but all seemed too tranquil for that really to have existed here, much less all the other wars between then and now.  But one obvious truth spurred me on, I needed some caffeine after the fun of the long, pre-dinner wine-tasting the evening before!

I hope you’ll have the same knowledgeable, enthusiastic guide we had during that morning’s walking tour of town, for he made the statues come alive as he told the human stories behind them.  What a transition then to leap into the saddle for more miles of sweet riverside cycling, then smack into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance!  At least that it was it felt like to stroll through the calendar-pretty and oh-so-seemingly-German town of Bernkastel, with its pointed-roof half-timbered houses, cheerful four-hundred-year-old market square, and Landshut Castle high above the wine groves stretching up the steep hills.

(By the way, “half-timbered” refers to the use of only half a hardwood tree log, like oak, which because of its strength did not require the entire log for support of a house or building.  The frame was built first and the walls filled in later, between the half-timbered structure which we still see today.)

I’ve forgotten to mention another of the pleasures of river riding, the opportunity to view from a distance the small towns across the blue water and the ferries and pleasure boats heading upstream or down.  The cycle path also provides close-up views of vineyards as you pedal past, and if you crane your neck you’ll find tiny people far above you working in the fields.  Oh, and the opportunity to converse with German and other fellow-cyclists on the car-free path.  What a great way to get around.

I didn’t think any town could surpass Bernkastel in visual delight, but the remarkable and busy burg of Cochem, with its huge and lofty castle and even larger market area of flowers and fountains, takes the prize.  It was founded in 1332, the town hall was finished in 1620, the whole place was sacked and burned by the French in 1689…and today it couldn’t look any more peaceful or pretty.

Cochem’s Reichsburg Castle is visible for miles and illuminated at night, and was easily the most resplendent castle I’d ever seen, until that afternoon.  On a pleasant break from the saddle our small group hiked for maybe a mile through a cool and green side valley of trees, when suddenly the massive medieval wonder of multiple tall, slender turrets called the Burg Eltz Castle came into view.  You’ll probably recognize it, for it’s adorned zillions of calendars and magazine covers.

I’ve run on too long, so I’ll leave it to you to fill in the blanks (during your own visit) on the remaining miles of fun riding along the Mosel to the Rhine.  In my memory it was all vineyards and blue water and high white cumulous clouds one moment, then the cosmopolitan city of Coblence (where the rivers intersect) the next.  After a week of towns and villages this burg of 100,000 seemed huge, but still imminently bike-friendly.

I wish I could close on a more positive note, but Coblence is where I made my biggest mistake of the trip, not making a U-turn for a second taste of the Mosel all the way back to Trier!

by Dan Austin

Remember Dorothy’s words sung over and over as she skipped along the yellow brick road? Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Had she been in the magical northwest corner of Wyoming instead of the Land of Oz, she might have been signing  Geysers, hot springs, fumaroles, mud pots!  Elk and moose and grizzly bears!

That’s right, they’re all here in Yellowstone, and by the thousands. Ten thousand geo-thermal wonders, half of all that exist in the entire world.  Two thousand buffalo.  Twenty thousand elk.  Plus a waterfall twice as high as Niagara Falls, a park that’s larger than two entire states, more than a thousand miles of trails, and historic hotels built for the rich a century ago, including the largest log structure in the world, the enormous Old Faithful Inn.

But that’s not all:  You can fish or boat on the largest mountain lake Lake Yellowstone in all of North America (20 miles wide by 14 miles long, a shoreline of 110 miles!).  And if the economy has you bummed about having to put off that African safari for a year or two, think instead of visiting, the largest sanctuary for western large mammals in the lower forty-eight states.  Granted, you won’t come face to face with a rhino.  But a one-ton bison can be just as intimidating.  And in addition to the elk and moose and griz and buffalo there are wolves, black bear, bighorn sheep, antelope, cougar, coyote, mule deer…and those are just the larger critters.

Are feathers your preference?  Yellowstone is known to America’s 46 million birders for its trumpeter swans, osprey, bald eagles, golden eagles, white pelicans, sandhill cranes, great blue herons, Canada geese, ravens, magpies, killdeer, yellow-headed blackbirds, dippers, and more.  Even if you can’t tell a bluebird from a duck you’ll get a kick out of the variety.

But enough of lists…you get the idea.  There’s so much to see and it’s easy to get here.  There are airports nearby (West Yellowstone, Bozeman, Jackson…), should you choose to fly.  But if lower gas prices have you thinking of a family road trip, of seeing the USA in your Chevrolet (other makes are allowed), know that just driving in can be a wonder. (Wonderland, by the way, was a common 19th century name for this place, before it became the world’s first national park way back in 1872 and was later officially monickered Yellowstone).

Five paved-road entrances beckon you to the heart of the park, a figure-eight road system designed to take the visitor to and through an unforgettable land.  But even before you reach this huge quarter-million-acre thermal and animal sanctuary of Rocky Mountain wilderness, you’ll have traversed the “Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.”  Like a jewel in a velvet box, the park is nearly surrounded by the Gallatin, Madison, Absaroka, Gros Ventre, Wind River, and Teton Mountains, plus five national forests.  As the old saying goes, getting there is half the fun.

As the director of an active-travel tour company I’m often asked, “What’s your favorite trip?”  If I’m just back from somewhere I almost always answer wherever I’ve just been, because I’m thinking of the people. the guests and the guides, whom I’ve just enjoyed for a solid week.

But my favorite favorite place?  You guessed it, Yellowstone.  Much of the reason is all that I’ve already mentioned, the wondrous sights and even the sounds of the place the whoosh and gurgle of exploding geysers, the bubbling, plopping sound of mud pots, the giggle of kids when seeing these things for the very first time (my guides are unanimous in preferring family trips for this precise reason).  Clark’s Nutcrackers and huge black ravens fly overhead, making their distinctive sounds, while nearby buffalo grunt their displeasure at having to move to remain in the shade.  There’s always something happening in the Park.

And then there are the stories.  Dinnertime for group travel is when one hears what everyone has seen and experienced during the day, and in Yellowstone that adds up to a lot.  That would be true even if you only drove through the Park and took the boardwalk strolls around the hissing pools and geysers.  But the road system covers only two percent of what there is to see.  Our tours take people off the roads and into the backcountry by mountain bike and on foot trails, and just north of the park boundary  (still in the Yellowstone Ecosystem) by horse into the high country guided by real cowboys.  You can imagine the stories that spill out at dinner after these activities.

For all the natural history of the array of animals and geologic wonders of Yellowstone, the Park’s human history is equally fascinating.  We have to imagine the reactions of the Crow and Blackfoot and Shoshone Indians as they traveled through today’s Park lands, and of John Colter (a former member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition) who was perhaps the first white man to see this region, alone and in winter to boot!  Luckily, there are better records of mountain man Jim Bridger marveling at the sights two decades later in 1825…

Like Colter when he had attempted to tell the truth of what he’d seen, Bridger was faced with smiles and shaking heads when he reported boiling springs and petrified trees.  So, in perfect fur-trapper style, he cranked things up a bit.  He told, with a straight face,  of catching trout deep in the cooler waters of those springs and pulling the fish up ever so slowly, cooking his dinner on the way out.  The unstretched stories of petrified trees likewise weren’t believed, so they became peetrified forests where peetrified birds sang peetrified songs.  He swore of the useful “eight-hour echo that you can wind up by shouting, “Time to get up!” when you went to bed.

Three somewhat scientific expeditions (1869-1871) were required to make Americans believe what had been earlier rumored, and all make interesting reading. But more fascinating, for its human element, is Truman Everts lengthy Scribner’s Monthly magazine article, Thirty-Seven Days of Peril (now available as a book titled, Lost in Yellowstone), in which he describes becoming separated from the 1870 Washburn-Langford-Doane expedition and having to live in the wilds until rescued.

Though he took care of hundreds of wounded Civil War soldiers on the field at bloody Fredericksburg, he had trouble caring for himself after his horse bolted on day two of his separation from the group.  My blankets, gun, pistols, fishing tackle, matches, everything, except the clothing on my person, a couple of knives, and a small opera-glass  were attached to the saddle.  Our tour guides point out to guests the plant that sustained him, today called the Everts Thistle.  The poor lost man had been four days without food when he chanced upon one and, finding it’s not unlike a radish, ate several.  (He cooked them in a small, round, boiling spring, which I called my dinner-pot….)

Everts was overjoyed at this discovery and, with hunger allayed, went to sleep beneath a tree only to be awakened in the dark by the screech of a mountain lion.  He hurriedly climbed the tree and kept the cat at bay by throwing branches and howling back.  Hundreds of thistles, two minnows, some grasshoppers, a small bird and a month later, the man who found him reported, laconically, “He is alive and safe, but very low in flesh.”  He wasn’t kidding, for Everts weight was guessed at only fifty pounds.  Another writer, who interviewed his rescuer, described his condition more fully:

…he never saw so forlorn a looking human being as was Everts when found.  A few tattered rags upon an emaciated skeleton, frozen, scalded, singed and festered into the semblance of a two-legged animal, hideous beyond description….

Truman Everts was wasting away, but no one has ever been lost so long in Yellowstone and survived.  The man had grit.  In further proof of his staying power he married a second time at sixty-five, fathered a child at seventy-five, and died a decade later.  (I include his tale not only because it is fascinating, but because his report’s publication in 1871 riveted the nation and helped the push toward saving this huge piece of wilderness as a national park.)

Don’t think human history becomes dull once Yellowstone becomes a park in 1872.  Just five years later, when gold is discovered on the lands of the Nez Perce Indians and the tribe is ordered to a reservation, they chose a fighting retreat to Canada instead and routed themselves through Yellowstone.  While in the Park they encountered a number of tourist parties, including that of a Mrs. George Cowan, who later wrote a lengthy description of their capture.  Her husband, a Civil War veteran, was shot first through the thigh and only minutes later in the head by an Indian holding a pistol at point-blank range.  Left for dead by the Nez Perce, he awakened after a few hours (the soft pistol ball had flattened against the skull and didn’t penetrate), but when he stood up he was seen by another Indian and shot, this time through the hip.

More hours passed as he faded in and out of consciousness.  Then he came to and, hearing only silence, began crawling toward water (he no longer could walk).  Five days later he’d covered the ten miles to a former camp at Lower Geyser Basin and was found by two Army scouts.  They fed him, wrapped him in blankets against the night chill (almost all of Yellowstone is above 7,000), built a warm fire and, explaining that they had to continue scouting and would send an Army patrol out to rescue him, rode off.

Later in the night a high wind blew the flames into the nearby trees, creating a forest fire; George Cowan barely managed to crawl away to safety, burning his hands and knees.  But he was picked up later by an Army patrol and packed out of the park, then transferred to a wagon that flipped down a ravine when the horses bolted.  Thankfully, its occupants had been tossed out before the descent.  The thrice-up, burned, and now severely bruised Cowan required all fall and winter to recover from his visit to Yellowstone.

But don’t get the wrong idea.  For every old-time story of someone lost, shot, or eaten by a bear (inevitably an Easterner who has tried to pet the nice griz or feed the black bear by hand), there are countless magazine articles written by visitors extolling the peaceable beauties of Wonderland (that name died a slow death).  In fact, as early as 1883 a group of cycling enthusiasts pedaled the dirt roads on high-wheelers.  John Muir, more often associated with Yosemite, visited two years later, and suffered nothing worse than the equivalent of a fender-bender today, he was thrown from his horse.

In 1887 Owen Wister, author of many Western novels (including The Virginian) and a friend of Theodore Roosevelt, wrote that the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River (the one that’s twice the height of Niagara Falls) is “the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”  Then he and his hell-raising buddies shocked the tourists by washing their underwear in a geyser, and bought blackberry brandy from a hotel clerk to… “check disturbances which drinking queer water from highly chemical brooks often raised in human interiors.”  You’ll find the water purified today.

If Rudyard Kipling had ridden horses through the park with Wister’s band of cut-ups he might have enjoyed himself.  Instead, thinking to see Wonderland on his long trip to London from India he managed to get stuck in a carriage with two old people from Chicago; the missus chewed gum and talked about her symptoms, while the husband at every geyser complained about the dreffel [dreadful] waste of steam-power.  Whatever the cause, the author of The Jungle Book was not a happy man.  He begins his article with “To-day I am in the Yellowstone Park, and I wish I were dead.”  Things don’t improve much from there:
“The Park is just a howling wilderness of three thousand square miles, full of all imaginable freaks of a fiery nature.”

“The ground rings hollow as a kerosene-tin, and some day the Mammoth Hotel, guests and all, will sink into the caverns below and be turned into a stalactite.”  [It hasn't happened yet.]

“…we walked chattering to the uplands of Hell.  They call it the Norris Geyser Basin on Earth…There were no terraces here, but all other horrors.”

Needless to say, Kipling wouldn’t have made it as a park ranger.  Or as an Austin-Lehman Adventures guide!

I’ve written too much about this one-of-a-kind place on earth, and there’s still more than a century of history to tell…like the contingent of Buffalo Soldiers in 1896 who pedal to Mammoth Hot Springs from Fort Missoula and back (you’ll see photos of these stalwart bikers when you visit Old Faithful Inn)  a distance of 790 miles with full field kit; the next year they rode their heavy bikes with field gear from Montana to Missouri!  And then there’s Teddy Roosevelt’s visit in 1903….

The tales go on and on, just like Old Faithful.  So come, and add your own.

I read on our Alumni site, My ALA Adventures, that you majored in Economics.  How did you make the leap from Economics to Adventure Travel?  Was it a difficult transition?

Even though I found Economics and its big brother Mathematics to be very intriguing during my studies, it became clear that I could not see myself sit in meetings or behind a computer screen for the rest of my life. Furthermore, I did not believe in the economists, ability to forecast the future, no matter how hard they try or what they claim. The outdoors, Adventure Travel, and bicycle tours in particular, had always been my summer job. So when I was offered a “real job” in Adventure Travel upon completion of my Master’s degree, the decision and transition was very easy. I never had any regrets whatsoever.

How did you get started in adventure travel?

In 1974, a friend of my father, who lives in the U.S., started a company called Euro-Bike Tours. It’s name is self-explanatory. Since my family lived in the Netherlands, he had asked my dad to do some preparatory work for him, like scouting routes, visiting hotels, etc. I was 16 years old then. With my keen interest in travel and in bicycling, it became the perfect summer job for the next ten years.

What’s your favorite adventure experience as a guest?

When you work in the travel business like me, you’re always the host and hardly ever get to be the guest. Last year I was a guest, on a bike trip in New Zealand. The greatest thing about being a guest is: you don’t need to worry about what happens next, because the guides will take care of everything. I am not a spa person, but being on an adventure experience gives you that same relaxed feeling. All you need to do is concentrate on the activity you are participating in, whether biking or walking or kayaking or whatever, while the rest is all taken care, almost by magic! It’s that don’t worry, be happy mind-frame which takes you to a new dimension.

What’s the best thing about adventure travel?

Your question suggests there is only one best thing. I can think of a whole list, but let me concentrate on just one aspect. Adventure travel makes you forget about the rest of the world, and it brings you together with the rest of the world. Sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not. It’s something one needs to experience first-hand to be able to understand.

When you’re building a new vacation, what do you look for?

Since I built vacations in Europe, I look for the perfect mix of historic places, medieval towns which appeal to our imagination, cultural highlights whether world-famous or little known, quaint hotels, fine restaurants, ancient trails, authenticity. Also, I try to build in choices, so our guests have room to pursue their own interests. The notion of Freedom is a very important “good,” which should be nurtured.

What’s the biggest challenge you run into when scouting a new trip?

This varies from trip to trip. Finding the right hotel within a certain distance can sometimes be a challenge, although I must add that Europe is quite developed and rewarding in this respect. Finding a decent bike trail into a city can be another one, and so is the avoidance of difficult terrain. Scouting begins in the office, by reading books and looking at maps. When in the region, you need lots of patience and perseverance to find the optimal solution. Once you do, you reach that natural high. It must be a similar feeling an artist gets when he/she has created a work of art. I love it!

What suggestions can you share for helping a guest choose a perfect vacation?

All our trips are great, or we wouldn’t be offering them. However, one should be aware that there are various levels of difficulty, as clearly indicated in our catalog and on our website. Everyone will have a good time on a level 1 trip, but some might not be as happy as can be on a level 4 trip (don’t worry, the guide will nevertheless make it work). When in doubt, choose a trip that’s easier than what you think you can do. You can always upgrade next time you travel with us again.

How do you recommend travelers prepare for an adventure trip in a country they’ve never visited before?

Reading a guide book about the region never hurts. A historic novel will also get you in the mood. If you wish to brush up on your foreign languages: fine, but it’s not a necessity, especially since english has evolved into becoming the world language. Some basic words will suffice, as this creates a lot of goodwill! Once you sign up, you will see that Austin-Lehman sends you an informative and useful Pre-Trip Information Package. Be open-minded and relaxed: your guides are your friends (and translators) and will be there to help you.

What are your favorite adventure trips offered by ALA and why?

I love each one of them, for different reasons. So if a guest asks me that question (and they often do), for pure marketing reasons I always mention a trip they haven’t been on yet. Tuscany is a fantastic region, and Italy as a whole is certainly one of my favorite countries: the culture, the art, the food, and above all: the people. But then again, I can say so many good things about France, Germany, Holland. Where did you say you haven’t traveled yet?

You often guide adventures as well as handling many of the operational aspects.  What is your favorite adventure to guide and why?

Good food accompanied by fine wines are another hobby of mine. All of this tastes so much better after a day of physical motion. The Dordogne and Provence regions certainly fall in this category, and I consider southern France as my 2nd home.

When guiding a trip, what do you feel guests enjoy the most?  What do you add or share that makes a trip special?

History and stories from the region. One can’t understand the European people & culture unless one is somewhat familiar with its history. When I made my choice to study Economics, it was because I believed that my real passion History would not render a decent job (little did I know!). Well, history continues to be my passion, and I love to share this with our guests, in particular during our morning briefing. Don’t worry: I won’t bore you with dates and facts like you’re back in school, although I do take it with pride when people sometimes tell me: “You could be a great teacher!” or something in that fashion.