Lisa Wandel in Bar Harbor, Maine. Wandel biked across the country, totaling 5,000 miles on the road.

After biking 108 miles across Minnesota, Lisa Wandel was only two miles from her campground when a black bear — its hair standing up straight on its back — ran and stood in the middle of her path.

Wandel raised her arms up high, trying to look big. The bear sniffed and walked off into the woods.

“I pedaled as fast as I could those last two miles,” Wandel said. “I couldn’t have ridden any faster until I got to the campground.”

Wandel, 60, was in the middle of a monthslong cycling trip across the country from Anacortes, Washington, to Bar Harbor, Maine.

On June 2, she went by train to the West Coast before heading back on her bike, with the goal of doing a “century” — 100 miles in one day — in each state she passed through where she hadn’t done one already.

As her kids got older, Wandel began doing longer bike rides with groups of women, whether it was on rail trails or weekend rides.

In 2011, she started the Women’s Adventure Club of Centre County, which allowed both newcomers and veterans to hike, bike, canoe, kayak, ski and snowshoe together.

Her first “serious” biking event was a 24-hour bike race in Michigan, in which participants bike in a loop for a day straight. On her first try, she rode 312 miles.

“The second year I went back, it was really hot and humid, and I didn’t do well,” Wandel said. “I would come into the home base … and I would lay on the floor where the concrete was cold, just to cool off before I go back out and ride again.”

Another time, Wandel did the “Allegheny 100 Challenge,” an unsupported endurance hike through the Allegheny National Forest. Hikers have 50 hours to do the challenge, starting at 6 p.m. on a Friday and hiking until 8 p.m. that Sunday.

Wandel’s first bike tour was in the fall of 2019, after retiring from her position as Penn State University’s director of residential dining, a role she held for 35 years.

Starting in August, she rode from Bar Harbor, Maine, to Key West, Florida, over the course of a month.

“When I was finished, I really wanted to go back. I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, it was so much fun,'” Wandel said. “Strangers would come up to me in stores and say, ‘I saw you pull in, is there anything you need? I just live down the street if you need to come and take a shower or anything like that,’ … You really meet a lot of nice people.”

After her 2019 trip, she decided her next one would be the “northern tier,” where she could hit Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Indiana.

In Maine, Wandel was joined by Joanna Weidler-Lewis, a friend she knew through the Women’s Adventure Club of Centre County. Weidler-Lewis met her in Conway, New Hampshire, before biking with her across Maine.

“Riding with Lisa is always a pleasure because she is fearless and compassionate,” Weidler-Lewis said. “I think (on) the ride across Maine, I got to watch how resilient she is to do this kind of trip across the country, mostly by herself. It’s really remarkable.”

When Wandel got to Bar Harbor, she had ridden more than 4,500 miles, and she wanted to reach 5,000. But large storms and Hurricane Ida were coming in, and she decided she had only four days to ride 409 miles. She managed to do it, ending up in Windsor, Massachusetts.

But the hardest part of the trip wasn’t the riding, Wandel said — she averaged about 75 miles a day — it was the logistics. The planning — finding campgrounds, mapping out where to stay and addressing flat tires — took longer than the ride itself.

Wandel also couldn’t make hotel reservations ahead of time, because she could have run into mechanical issues or bad weather. Out West, she said, it was harder to navigate, because campgrounds were farther apart and often wouldn’t have enough staff.

But by relying on the kindness of others, she was able to get by. In a small Montana town where she discovered her planned campsite had moved

25 miles away without her knowledge, she thought she was going to have to pitch her tent by a local church.

“It was getting dark … But as I was getting closer to town, there was a horse trailer that had just pulled off the road into a small farm,” Wandel said. “I thought, ‘Horse people are nice …’ I’ll go in there and explain my dilemma, and maybe they’ll let me put a tent out behind the barn. So I went in and explained and the mom’s like, ‘Oh, yes, you can stay, but you don’t want to be behind the barn. It’s real dirty and muddy.'”

Wandel stayed in the family’s camper that night, free of charge. Other times, she stayed with “warm shower hosts” — people who invite cyclists doing bike tours into their homes to rest, do laundry and eat dinner with them.

Wandel said her biggest inspiration is her mother, Lois Smith, who has an adventurous spirit of her own.

“Gosh, she was probably 79 or 80 (when) she took us down to Costa Rica. She was ziplining through the rain forest, caving with us,” Wandel said. “I think she rappelled down like 10 waterfalls.”

Smith, now 92, was worried about Wandel passing safely through some of the western states. But she’s grateful that she and her children have been able to live such active lives, especially after Wandel’s long career at Penn State.

“There was a lot of pressure there. I think (biking) was a way to unwind and have purpose in life,” Smith said. “When you retire, you just don’t retire. I mean, life begins again — it’s a new beginning.”