Guy
Boutin's Motorcycle Touring and Travel Pages
Adventures in Sport
Touring with the Honda ST 1100, 1300 and the BMW 1200RT
Exploring North America...One Road
at a Time
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Guy
Boutin's Motorcycle Touring and Travel Pages
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Camping In the beginning I wasn't much of a camper, but over the years I've become pretty good at it. I like camping, not only is it a great way to extend a tour, but it just seems to go with Long Riding. Staying in motels every night up to 3 weeks gets expensive quickly. Not only does camping save me a lot of money, it allows me to witness beautiful scenery, and enjoy some peace and quiet. There is nothing like a peaceful campsite in the Sawtooths next to a mountain stream, plus my tent and sleeping bag, are clean, that is not always true of motel rooms. Camping is not for everyone, and the related equipment takes up a lot of room on the bike. If I'm camping it takes me 30 minutes to break down camp and load the bike, from a motel room about 15 minutes, most of the extra time is due to repacking the tent. The tradeoff is the bike is right there in front of you and easy to load. Tent- My tent is the 2 man Eureka, good living space, with outside vestibules to keep my living space clean of dirty boots and other stuff. A nice touch. The tent sheds water well and keeps me dry when it rains. Speaking of which, if I KNOW the weather is iffy, I skip camping. The tent also has 2 handy inside pockets. Mine came from the Aerostich catalog.
Sleeping Bag- I'm still using the original sleeping bag from my first West Coast Tour of 2001. It is a Wiggy, by Grand Junction, Colorado and rated to 30 degrees. I'm NOT going to camp if its any colder than that, so I'm not carrying the extra weight and bulk of negative 10 degree bag. I camp in summer, the nights are warm. Out west, where I do most of my camping, the temps might dip into the 50s and the Wiggy is just right. I have had a few cool nights in the mountains, but not ever had anything I'd call cold. The only exception is the Blue Ridge in fall. It seems the weekend I'm there a cold snap always rolls in. When that happens I rent a blanket from the campground for a dollar, throw it over my sleeping bag, and I'm plenty warm. I stuff my sleeping bag and pillow in the hole of the rolled up sleeping pad in the H2W bag. Sleeping Pad- I use a Therm a Rest sleeping pad under my sleeping bag, and swear by it. It is comfortable and keeps me off the cold ground. I open the valve to inflate the unit while I stake my tent out. In the mornings I roll it with the valve open, squeeze all the air out of it, and stuff it in the Helen 2 Wheel bag. I can't imagine camping without it. Update 2010- In the Fall of 2010 I went to the Exped Synmat 9 air matters/pad. This is a cross between a air mattress and thermarest. The unit sleeps like a air mattress but deploys and packs like a pad. The pad has a self contained hand pump, that takes about to 2 minutes to inflate. It is very comfortable and a big improvement over the Thermarest. Fully inflated it gives a guy 4 to 5 inches of air to sleep on. I roll it in the same manner as the Thermarest and pack it in the H2W sack just like the Therm. Only thing I do different is pack my pillow ontop of the pad instead of in the donut hole that was made when I rolled the pad in the sack. The Synmat is not as stiff as the Therm, and I can't roll it out in the sack making the hole for the pad. Not a big deal because the Synmat will pack down better, so I just stuff my pillow ontop and close the H2W. If you do a lot of camping, over a series of nights, this unit is worth the extra money. Now that I'm getting older, the once comfortable Thermarest was wearing on me, and wanted a upgrade so I shopped for a couple of years, but I couldn't find anything suitable. I looked into the air bed things at WalMart and others, and found them too big, and heavy. They take up a lot of room on a bike. But this Synmat is the ticket for Long Riding. Not only is the Synmat softer, it is wider than a pad. A quality piece of equipment. The link below has more details, and a video on how the system works. Exped SynMat 9 Pump DLX Inflatable Sleeping Pad | Video | Reviews Campgrounds- What do I look for in a campground? Mostly quiet and a shower, but not always possible finding them. State Parks seem to be the most quiet, many are seldom used. For the most part they are scenic, but the facilities are a crap shoot. Meaning you could have a shower but no hot water. I've camped in some pristine Federal Parks, but I was void a shower most of them. Look for campgrounds in the National Parks such as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, and Yellowstone to be crowded. I like KOA, more expensive than government parks, but clean bathrooms and showers. The trade off they can be noisy and not very scenic. Trip Planning- Planning a trip is one of the fun things about Long Riding. To pull out a map and say I'm going to ride from here to there, fires me up. I get my atlas out and see the places and roads I'd like to ride. I look for interesting roads and link them to the places and things I'd like to visit. Once I have the basic route, I fine tune it in the Garmin software, then download it to the unit. You can learn more about that on the GPS page. Some freelance, and tour with no real plan, others have every detail down to what time they're going to eat lunch and where. I like having a plan of where I want to go, and what I want to see. Just riding around can cause you to miss some really nice things. However I am flexible, if the weather is bad where I had planned to go, I'll do something else, and if I find myself in a really great place, I might hang around an extra day. Other Notes- The first few tours I cooked my food at the campgound, but stopped a long time ago. It just got to be too big a hassle. Unless you're going to eat out of can, it is no cheaper than going out to eat. By the time a guy buys a steak, charcoal, and anything else, not much cheaper than a visit to LongHorn, and whole lot less trouble. You have to stop for food, haul it around, cook it, and clean up. Tasty meal for sure, but way too much trouble. For the times I find myself at a remote campground, I just break out my bread and canned chicken, that I carry for just such an occasion.
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