It wasn’t the road trip one would expect four young men — three of them fresh out of college — would have.

They jumped on their bikes three months ago and pedaled from Chicago, across vast stretches of plain and up and down mountains, to Whidbey Island. Along the way, they stopped at churches in small towns and spent time with pastors, sometimes sleeping overnight in church basements or camping in a church backyard.

The young men are interested in the ministry, in some shape or form, and they saw the trip as sort of a pilgrimage in which the journey, not the destination, was important.

“We really took great joy in stopping at rural churches and talking to pastors along the way,” said Craig Vanderstoop. “Rural pastors can get really lonely and they liked to talk with us. We were able to minister to them in that way.”

Vanderstoop, a 2000 graduate of Oak Harbor High School, led three friends, Rob McGee of Knoxville, Tenn., Brant Shepherd of Knoxville and Ken Lippold of Chicago, across the country to his hometown. After exactly 3,509.1 miles, they finally made it.

Vanderstoop is attending Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, where he met the others. McGee and Lippold recently graduated from Moody. Shepherd is a friend, a graduate of Middleton State University, who signed on for the trip.

The trip was difficult for the novice bikers. Shepherd explained that the idea started out as a trip to Alaska, where they could earn money working in the salmon fishing industry. The plan evolved into a bike trip of a lifetime.

While it only rained on them for one day the entire trip, the wind was a bear. Vanderstoop said they always seemed to be riding into the wind. There were times when it was so strong they had to pedal downhill just to keep moving.

The men lost considerable weight and added sun tans along the way.

“Some part of my body hurt every day,” Lippold said.

But they made do with healthy doses of faith and prayer. “We felt God had called us together as a team,” McGee said. “We are all so different, have different capabilities. … It was a challenge.”

Using maps from Adventure Cycling, the team traveled through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana and Washington. With only a few exceptions, they stopped at small towns with populations of about 100 or smaller.

They drew a lot of attention in the small towns, but also discovered much kindness. Strangers fed them and brought them into their homes or churches. A diner gave them free meals and a Good Samaritan even put them up in a hotel overnight. In Colorado, they met a man who turned out to be a tour guide for whitewater rafting trips. He convinced them to take a day off from biking for a free trip down the Royal Gorge.

“God provided for us in so many ways,” Vanderstoop said.

You can reach News-Times reporter Jessie Stensland at jstensland@whidbeynews

times.com or call 675-6611.