Warsaw resident Tanya Kempton recently biked more than 3,000 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge to Yorktown, Va., to raise funds for lymphoma research.
Kempton, 52, has been a freshman algebra teacher at Warsaw Community High School for the past 15 years.
She is the mother of Travis, Trey and Trevor.
She previously served from 2002 to 2009 as the varsity softball coach at WCHS.
She said she has been cycling for the past five years, but this was her first tour and she purchased a touring bike for the trip.
Kempton began her coast-to-coast journey June 1 with four young people during a 3,972-mile ride.
She learned about the ride to raise funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society from her son Travis’s friend, Jonathon Henry, a Grace College graduate.
The group called their ride “Momma Henry’s Trek Across America.”
Henry’s mother, Antonia, died from lymphoma disease in November.
The group raised $10,000 for the society during their ride.
Kempton raised money for the society collecting funds from members of Warsaw Community Church, where she attends, as well as family members and friends.
Kempton went on the ride with Henry, Henry’s brother David, David’s girlfriend Lupe Fernandez and David’s friend Carlos Salgado.
She took a flight from Indiana to California May 31, and shipped her bike to California.
The journey began at the Golden Gate Bridge June 1 and she arrived in Yorktown, Va., Aug. 5, after biking more than 3,000 miles during a 65-day trip.
She headed back on a train to South Bend, arriving there Aug. 9, and came back to Warsaw.
She made a stop in Washington, D.C., for a few days before returning to Indiana.
“It became a personal goal and on my bucket list to make it across the United States,” Kempton said.
During her journey she visited Sacramento, Calif.; Nevada; visited canyons in Utah; and the mountains in Colorado.
“Pretty much our whole route was either mountains or hills,” Kempton said.
While traveling, she said she camped in city parks and at campsites and stayed at churches.
She traveled with clothing, cooking supplies, rain gear, a tent and sleeping bag.
“I had never camped before and got to do that for the first time,” Kempton said.
Kempton started her journey in June with the youth, and then in Montrose, Colo., on July 1 she went off on her own so she could finish the journey in time to get back to teach school.
She rode with the youth in California, Nevada, Utah and half of Colorado.
She traveled by herself for three to four days and met a young boy in Kansas who was a cyclist and they did 95 mile days three days in a row and caught up to his group.
She went to Missouri, the Ozarks, the Mississippi River and Illinois and went on a ferry to go across the bridge over the Ohio River and she went through Kentucky. She went through the Appalachian and Blue Ridge Mountains and ended up in Yorktown, Va.
The youth are still traveling, and after arriving in Colorado went to Chicago for a fundraiser, then onto Ohio and Pennsylvania and will finish the end of August.
Kempton said her favorite part of the ride was seeing the canyons in Utah.
“It was just beautiful there. I had never been to Utah,” Kempton said.
She also enjoyed seeing the sunflowers in Kansas, and she said Colorado was beautiful.
She said it means a lot that her sons are proud of her for completing the ride.
Kempton said people were kind along the way, offering to cook her lunch.
In Nevada, she ran out of water and had to flag down a car of people who gave her water.
She said she took lots of photos to remember her journey.
