Travel North America for FREE

Travel North America for free​.
text and photos: Vyacheslav Stoyanov
drawings: Yana Melamed
​www.cycle4recycle.com

Everybody has a dream. One of the most popular dreams of all is to travel, to see the world. But usually people don't go anywhere because of one big excuse: “I don’t have the money for this!” Yes, free time is expensive! I quit my job; the same goes with Yana on our epic journey from Alaska to Argentina just with 1000 dollars in our pockets. We crossed the from the northernmost point of the US - Deadhorse, Alaska or Prudhoe Bay - to the southernmost point in Key West, Florida. And we’re still going. From coast to coast we spent just 750 dollars in 250 days (8 months), or average 3 dollars a day for 2 of us. Is it possible to survive just with 3 dollars day budget for 2 people? Yes, it’s possible! Here, I’m sharing how we made it via some of our tips for travel:
All you need is food!

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 Bicycle. If you go on a big journey, use a bicycle as a vehicle. It’s much more flexible and cheaper. Using your body for transportation is the best way to move. No gasoline, no road or parking taxes. It’s free! You can cycle everywhere, on the bicycle paths and trails or sharing the road with pedestrians and motor vehicles. The opportunity to stop anywhere you want is amazing. You can enjoy the places where motor vehicles can’t reach. With a bicycle it’s much easier to find safe place for free camping, especially in the US, where everything is Private Property. Your bicycle is like a versatile piece of luggage. You can take your bike in the train, ferry, bus, or even on the plane and fly anywhere you want. You don’t need a special custom made super-duper bicycle. All you need is a strong, comfortable bike, a pair of strong touring tires, and some spare parts (for example, brakes, cables, inner tubes and multitool). You can build your own bike very cheap using the old spare parts at the Bicycle Collective in Utah, or Bike Farm in Oregon, or Bike Kitchen in California or in many other places like those. The best part of that is you will learn how to fix bicycle by yourself. With "Schwalbe Marathon plus tour" you can cover more than 30000k with few flats. Strongly recommended, but this is NOT a commercial - they are super expensive! If you have a budget for waterproof panniers, do it! They are expensive too, but you will keep your gear dry till the end of your journey. But… if you haven’t a budget, it’s not a big deal, one poncho will work very well. The most important aspect of bike touring comfortably is keeping your body is free of luggage; you should attach all your gear to your bike. Even for unpracticed cyclists, it is no problem to cover around 80k on a flat terrain or 50k on a hilly landscape each day. If you challenge yourself, you can do much more.

 Gear. It’s important for survival. Simple equipment such as a tent, sleeping bag and pad for freezing temperatures and some clothes for warm and cold weather is enough. “Deuter” gave us goose down sleeping bags “Deuter neosphere -10”. So happy to have them - they are light, warm and with left-right zipper. Do not wear jeans! A water filter or steripen are important for surviving in the wild. Using a camp stove that runs on non-reusable gas bottles is a bad choice! You cannot easily find spare gas bottles everywhere. This won’t be so flexible for you, it’s expensive, consumptive and makes trash. A better option is a stove running on a liquid fuel - you can find gasoline everywhere where cars are running. Sometimes it’s funny when we are prepaying 30 cents for fuel at the gas station and somebody from the queue is curios what we are driving. A wood burning stove is the best option for long journey but keep in mind that there are no woods in the polar tundra.

 Wildlife. Alaska and Canada except prairies are bear countries. Take a bear spray to fight for your life and food! It's nice to have it, but we never heard about anyone using it. In bear country, store your food and smelly things at least 100 meters away. All bears are very good climbers; hang your food on a tree at least 4 meters high during the night. Even your toothpaste and toothbrush smells like sweets to bears. Do not use perfume or deodorant in bear countries because the bears are very sensitive for smell and can smell 100 times better than a dog. All the way on Dalton Highway from Deadhorse to Atigun Pass is a polar tundra with no trees around. For keeping the food from the bears here, we used big rocks to cover up our food. We found out that bears don't like chili pepper, so we also we put a spicy chili pepper on the top. Grizzlies are intelligent, they mostly stay away from people, but black bears are stupid bastards, they don't fear humans and go looking for food everywhere. Do not feed wild life. If you feed a bird today, tomorrow a bear will come to your camp.  You will see also musk oxen, caribou, moose, deer, elk and livestock in Alaska and Canada. They look very friendly, but don’t try to make a selfie with them, they are aggressive sometimes. In South Carolina, Georgia and Florida you will see a lot of alligators and poison snakes three meters long. They are not usually dangerous, but don't try to swim into the rivers and creeks. The most dangerous animal the whole way down are raccoons. They don’t fear people and can steal your food and equipment. They are very smart and cunning. One night one of those bastards stole a package of spinach from our tent. In the morning we found the package and it was opened exactly on the place where marked “Open here”.   
Most important to remember that all animals need personal space. Big animals need more distance to feel safe. Bears needs at least 30 meters of personal space. You should never surprise animals with your appearance, make sure they know that you are around! You can make noise with a bearbell on your bike.

 Insects. Terrible bastards! From Alaska down to Key West Florida there are many mosquitoes. There is a huge variety of kinds, sizes and colors. But we remember the huge mosquitoes at the Arctic Circle best of all. There are so many. Even when you close your eyes and squash with your hands, there will be at least 10 bastards are on your arms. There is no way to eat or brush your teeth without escaping them. We tried many kinds of repellents but nothing helps - they are everywhere and nothing works against them! Sometimes you will need to wear mosquito net on your head but that was only from the polar tundra until Fairbanks. We met one native guy who is still using ancestral knowledge in the fight against mosquitoes. He showed us a special tree with a white skin and white dust on it, a poplar tree. That dust on the human skin works against the mosquitoes. But you only find poplars from Alaska until Alberta. You will also encounter with no-see-ums, a very little bugs (hence the name) with a big bite. They are in the prairies in Canada, mostly next to water and cattle. Our most serious encounter was in Florida when we were enjoying the sunset and wild camping on the beach. Usually they attack during the sunset and sunrise. Repellents doesn’t work. Just cover your body, even small parts of it, during the evenings and morning. You will also see lots of spiders, especially in Georgia and Florida. Be careful, some of them are poisonous. 

 Camping. Wild camping in the US is tough! You will see a lot of perfect spots to pitch the tent, but you can’t do it. North Americans, especially in the US, are very sensitive about their property. We advise you not to mess with that; in some states people can shoot you for entering their property. Especially in the most peaceful state, Texas, you will see a sign on the property - “I don’t call 911”. Don’t cross the line marked “POSTED” or “NO TRESPASSING”. Even small pieces of land may be someone’s private property. In Alaska you can camp almost anywhere you want but not in other states of the US. Many times we used the rest areas next to highways. Usually is written “No overnight camping” but nobody is going to kick you out. In Canada there are a lot of places for recreation. They have very nice gravel at the campgrounds and they are full with the noisy RVs. Sometimes they ask for 35 dollars to spend a night, but we didn’t used them.  There are a lot of places for hiding in the bushes. “Be invisible!” is our rule for camping. You never know who will come during the night to visit you. What we usually do when we need to camp somewhere? We look for a place to pitch the tent during a day. If there are no lights or cameras, and you are far away from the road you’ve been travelling, it is a good place to sleep and nobody will bother you during the night. But don’t do this in the cities or National Parks. The police will kick you out and will give you very fat ticket. In Canada they are a lot of spots between services and you can find a place to stay very easy. In the US the best choice for camping is on rails to trails bike paths. They are many in the US. Fairgrounds are free for camping too. Sometimes we are staying close to God, behind a church. There usually you will find tap water and electricity to charge your gadgets. Churches are everywhere, and usually there is nobody around except on Sundays. People in America are very religious and kind. They will help you if you ask for a help. Other option for camping is sport complexes. Even in the small towns there is a place for athletes. Sport complexes have restrooms, picnic shelters, tap water and electricity. Sometimes they are bordered with a wire wall for security. On rainy days the picnic shelters are the best choice. You can cook, rest, and be dry but you cannot stay overnight. All the public parks in US are day use and close at sundown, but if you are invisible, you can stay and enjoy the moment. The best challenge for free camping is at the Florida Keys. It’s hard! They have a few parks with camping areas, but they are crazy expensive. The cheapest is $16 to pitch a tent, others are $45 and up. In Key West camping is dangerous because of many homeless people. People call to them “snowbirds” because they’re moving to Key West during a winter. They’re also using bicycle for transportation. Local people were thinking we are homeless and gave us coffee and hamburgers. We didn’t mind. Free food always welcomed. We were camped on Smathers Beach and it was nice. No homeless folks or police, and even the service staff didn’t kick us out.

 Warmshowers.org  The best community for bicycle tourists. It’s nice to take a warm shower and have a new friend in a big city where you can’t pitch your tent. Sometimes the hosts spoil their guests with food and attention. But you then have to spoil your guests in your house when you are back at home. That’s how it works! Always “Pay it Forward” and you will receive generosity and kindness when you are on a big trip. Warmshowers is the best way to exchange experiences with people who have gone on a similar journey. But don’t take advantage of Warmshowers hospitality. Don’t ask for anything except feedback at your profile in warmshowers.org.  Don’t forget to leave a feedback for your hosts and share your story of staying with other members. Usually for saying “thank you!” we bake bread as exchange for bed.

 Food. We eat everything that swims except submarines, everything that flies except airplanes and everything on four legs except tables! For saving money, you have to cook and eat everything you find! We fish, hunt, pick up the road kill, and even go dumpster diving. Everything is energy! We often carry a lot of food with us because we are always hungry, hungry Bulgarians. From Deadhorse to Fairbanks there are no services! There are only 2 stops in Coldfoot and Yukon River. If you start from Deadhorse like us, take food for at least 2 weeks with you. Pasta, rice, dry bread, dry meat, sugar, salt, oil, and energy bars, as much as you can. The food in Alaska and Canada is very expensive! When we arrived in Fairbanks we bought as much as we can carry because of the big distances between services and expensive food in small towns. North Americans waste too much of their food. Did we dumpster dive? Yes, we did! You will be surprised what you can find behind grocery stores. Fresh organic vegetables, meat, cheese, bread, butter, cakes, even salt. In Canada dumpster diving is great but be careful, the bears are also dumpster diving. In the big cities dumpster diving doesn’t work as well because of competition with between homeless people and rats. Small cities never lock their dumpsters and you can dive when the store is closed. All about dumpster diving and safety tips you can find in: trashwiki.org
Another other option for calories is the local food pantry. These are often run by the Salvation Army or a Church. You can research on the internet to find one near you.
The best food on our journey has been baking our homemade bread with a campfire. In America bread is awful… You can find good bread just in bakeries but it is crazy expensive. Making bread is easy and cheap. All-purpose flour, salt, sugar, instant yeast and water. Mix the dough very well and allow it to rise around an hour. Put the coals from the campfire around and above the pot, wait for 30 minutes, and you will never buy another bread from a store again. Fresh bread is the base source of food and it goes with every meal. We also make pizza, pasta, cookies with the same dough. Our staple food is “gypsy banitza”. Fresh bread with dipping made from vegetable oil mixed with spices and salt.  Very good source of energy and it’s very tasty.

Water. Fresh water is no problem and you can find everywhere in the US and Canada from the tap. Every gas station or restroom has a tap.  But water from the wild needs purification because of “Beaver fever” and other pathogens. We advising you to not filter milky water from big rivers or creeks. It’s going to bust your filter immediately. 

 Safety.  We always lock and cover our bikes during the night. Our advice is never to leave your bike unlocked when you are shopping or using the restroom. On the road, the most dangerous drivers are old people in huge RVs, they can’t see or walk very well but they always have an extra car and boat behind the RV. We still wondering how they able to use all that stuff… Be careful on Highways with a straight dividing line. Drivers are often texting and playing with their smartphone instead of paying attention. Police are always checking the parks or picnic areas during the night and if they see you, you will be in trouble. But they never walk. If you stay away from the service road and are invisible, they will never see you. Many times we tried to wake up before anyone comes by early in the morning, but these people are usually just joggers. Americans are so busy. Sometimes they wake at 3 in the morning, exercise, and after that go to work. It’s nice, because after 9pm in the evenings it is so quiet and everybody is asleep. Dogs are always biggest enemy of bicycles. If you stop and talk to them, they will stop too and go away.

 Navigation.  All the way till Key West Florida we used a smartphone for navigation. Google maps knows everything and gives good advice to bikers. It knew almost all bicycle paths and trails. Sometimes, when there is no Wi-Fi around, we used the “Here Maps” or "Maps.me" application for navigation it works offline and you can download all maps you need. Be careful, check the road twice, sometimes “the Bitch” will take you somewhere where is no way to cross. You can find many maps for biking on the internet. There are many nice “Rails to Trails” paths across the US, and the or “East Coast Green Way” on the East Coast. The best choice for maps is Adventure Cycling Association. They have a lot of maps for biking and advice for touring because the founders are some of the first bicycle tourers who cycled from Alaska to Argentina. They understand bicycle tourers’ needs very well. Strongly recommended! In Alaska and Yukon you do not need navigation. In the beginning is Delton Highway with a nice sticky muddy gravel and Alaska Highway after, paved with a nice wide shoulder. There are just one or two paved roads in Alaska and Western Canada.  

 Increase your cash.  Americans waste everything, even money. Usually you can find a lot of coins at the parking areas of gas stations, supermarkets and places with junk food, even on the shoulder. Sometimes we raise up to 3 dollars in coins just in one day. One time we find 400 dollars on the shoulder, like a jackpot. But the best and easiest way to raise money is to share your story with locals. We organized many presentations for bicycle clubs or stores, and we raised around $100 every time by having a small donation box. If you need money, work on your project. We advise finding a license plate from Alaska and putting it on your bike. Usually when we stop at the McDonald’s or the public library to use free WiFi and socialize, somebody will ask us when they see the license plate: “Are really come from Alaska?” It’s a very nice question for beginning a conversation. We are always ready for this moment. We share all the funny stories from our journey like a private presentation just for one person. Many times we receive a donation by the end of the conversation. But do not ask money or anything else, nobody likes it and it makes bike tourers look bad. But if somebody asks you if you need something, do not be ashamed, tell them of your needs, ask and you shall receive. People in North America are very kind and helpful. Another option increase your cash is collecting cans on the shoulder of the road. We meet a guy in Canada who raised up to 70 dollars a day from collecting cans on the shoulder. In the US many states do not pay for recycling, but in some them you can make up to 15 cents per can. Research on the internet about the places where you can return cans for recycling. If you are working hard on your project, share your photos and travel notes via your own webpage. Ask your followers to help you and include a PayPal button for donations. Sometimes people want to help you because they are inspired by someone living on two wheels. Mostly of your followers will be computer travelers. They have the same adventure-seeking soul you have, but they couldn’t go on a big trip because of their many responsibilities. You are the guy who is living their dream, and they will love to follow you online.
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