BRUNSWICK — After two months of riding their bicycles from Oregon to Maine, Danielle Willey and Amie Corso pedaled the last leg of the trip Saturday, headed for the Atlantic Ocean.

At a boat landing a few miles from Bowdoin College, they rolled their bicycles in the water, breaking out in smiles as they hoisted the bikes over their heads.

Willey, of Lewiston, and Corso, of Bend, Ore., both 20 and Bowdoin College juniors, left Oregon June 16.

Surviving trucks, hordes of insects, hunger and exhaustion, they biked through Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, part of Canada, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

Jennifer and Bud Willey, the parents of Danielle, said they initially weren’t happy about their daughter’s adventure.

“Going through remote areas like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana? Camping out every night?” Bud said.

“Not a fun thought for a parent,” Jennifer said.

The bikers started out as a group of five women who attend Bowdoin College. The group broke up when three went in a different direction in Canada to visit family. Throughout their trip, the group had a spot tracker on its blog.

“When you click on the link it shows exactly where they were every 10 minutes,” Jennifer Willey said. “For the first half of the trip I felt like I stalker; I was on it several times a day.”

After wheeling into Brunswick on Saturday, both bikers said they set out on the trip for the experience, to get in shape and to meet people.

The best part was eating; they were constantly hungry. The worst part was the length of the trip. By the end they were drained. “Getting back on the bike when you just wanted to do anything but bike was the worst part,” Danielle said.

They encountered truckers in South Dakota who swore at them for being on the road, a horde of grasshoppers so thick it hurt when they hit them. But they met a lot of nice people.

“I was impressed by the hospitality all the way,” Amie said. “We got taken in by families for a night. We’d just meet them at the grocery store randomly.”

One family, the Askers of Grangeville, Idaho, insisted the women stay at their home for two days and nights, feeding them three times a day. The bikers were waiting for parts to repair Danielle’s bicycle. While they waited, they got to know the Asker family so well that they attended the son’s Little League game.

The scariest part of the trek was riding the Trans-Canada Highway, “also known as ‘death strip,’” Danielle said.

The road crosses Canada and is often one lane in each direction. “There’s no shoulders. A lot of places the pavement is really bad,” Amie said.

“We hated every mile of it,” all 400 of them, Danielle said.

Trucks whizzed by so close that several times each day they thought they were going to die. The fear and frustration brought them to tears. They didn’t have flags, so they made some out of tree branches and reflectors. That helped some, they said.

The people in Canada were among the friendliest, they said.

For Amie, the trip changed her perception of distance. “I have an understanding of how big the world is,” she said. “We biked for two months, and we only went across a small section of it. But things also seem more accessible. I got myself here from my house (in Oregon).”

Danielle said the trip gave her more confidence. “I definitely had my doubts in the beginning,” she said. The experience showed her she can do tough things.

“I’m proud of her,” Jennifer Willey said. “I would never be that brave.”

The adventure was also an experience in how suffering heightens pleasure, Amie said.

“It was easy to appreciate the little things,” she said. “You’d spend half the day fantasizing about a cold soda. Then you get to have a cold soda. Your dreams come true.”

bwashuk@sunjournal.com

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