Bicycling with Butterflies: My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Monarch Migration

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Dykman is a real explorer, choosing to travel alone on a bike, camping out most nights in a tent outdoors.

The canopy, with its weave of branches, moderates temperatures (like a blanket) and shields precipitation (like an umbrella). Current farming practices don’t leave room for native plants like they once did…Monarchs require milkweed. In Bicycling with Butterflies, we follow Dykman on her 10,200-mile solo bicycle trip along the migration route of the Monarch butterfly from central Mexico to southern Canada, then east to New England, and then back to her starting point. Science, nature, and adventure come together in Sara Dykman’s riveting account of a solo bike trip along the 10,201 mile-long migratory path of the monarch butterfly. It gives many facts of the Monarch, and their soon to be extinction, and also educates you to what it is like taking a 255 day, 10,201 mile trip alone, on a bicycle.This is a nonfiction short story about a girl who followed the migration of Monarch butterflies from Mexico to Canada on a bicycle. My garden is currently a huge mess of wildflowers, but most of them were just pretty much planted and left and I know that grapevines are choking a lot of the flowers.

A heartwarming journey…[Sara Dykman] met skeptics along the way, but her humor and wit showcase how the monarch butterflies should be saved and cherished. Some excerpts talked as though cars are horrible things or the drivers are heartless because an animal is accidentally killed. If I left in March, I could get to Canada by summertime and be back in Mexico by November, just like the monarchs.Over time, my plan morphed and grew—until I no longer wanted to just visit the migrants, but to accompany them by bicycle on their great migration. and some of these complaints might have been better addressed towards people higher up in the food chain, so to speak. An extraordinary story in which Dykman seamlessly weaves together science, a real love of nature and the adventure and hazards of biking with butterflies from Mexico to Canada and back.

An extraordinary story in which Dykman seamlessly weaves together science, a real love of nature and the adventure and hazards of biking with butterflies from Mexico to Canada and back. The monarch at my feet was just warm enough to crawl; he was shivering to warm his muscles to make an escape possible. Thanks to this book, readers have a better idea of what that incredible journey entails… Dykman’s enthusiasm will motivate others to be more thoughtful about their decisions. She rides with the butterflies north, solo, across America, into Canada, a five-thousand mile, months-long ride, and then five thousand miles back to their sanctuary in Mexico. Bicycling with Butterflies is, in my opinion, simply the best book about adventure bicycling ever: gloves on the handlebars, feet on the pedals, bum on the saddle.As if on cue, a hummingbird rocketed through the understory to investigate the long, red flowers bent toward the hazy sun. You experience the highs and lows of the trip as you see it through her eyes and through the eyes of the Monarchs.