Passes & Canyons Blog

Motorcycles are great for camping.

Days are getting longer, although the temperatures are still low. But summer isn’t that far off and that means it’s time for touring motorcyclists to start thinking about hitting the open road. For most that means planning routes and making motel reservations. And then there are the campers.

No, not those humongo Runnamucca RVs, we’re talking about two-wheeled travelers who prefer to rough it, with tents and sleeping bags.

For anyone accustomed to car camping, where you take the cooler full of food and drink, an axe to cut firewood, a two-burner Coleman stove to cook on, along with eating utensils and everything else you can throw in, camping on a motorcycle might seem impossible. How do you carry all that stuff?

You don’t. Motorcycle camping is an exercise in minimalism. In fact, there is very little that you actually must have, provided you’re really prepared to rough it. Let’s start with the essentials.

Staying Dry
More than anything else, you need to stay dry. Getting wet means getting cold and that means all kinds of misery. Generally you’ll need a tent. Sure, you can sleep under a bridge if a raging storm is beating down but that’s not exactly camping–that’s survival.

Obviously the smaller your tent packs up the better. A simple nylon one – or two-man tent will do the job, preferably of the pop-up dome tent variety with shock-corded poles. The kind with a rain fly that extends out to form a sheltered vestibule is especially good, particularly if there won’t be enough room inside for all your stuff.

Next, you’ll need something to sleep on that will cushion you from the rocks and/or uneven ground. An air mattress works well but may be bulky. A thin foam pad takes up less room and doesn’t require blowing up. It’s your choice.

Sleeping bags are probably the bulkiest item on your camping list, so choose carefully. Yes, a down bag stuffs down to the smallest possible size, but if it gets wet it is worthless. It’s probably better to accept the larger bulk and get a fiber-fill bag.

One tip: Be sure you have some way to carry these things on your bike that keeps them dry, or that, conversely, you can pack them into wet without making a mess of everything else.

Everything Else Is Extra
So what do you do about eating when you’re camping on your motorcycle? Some campers carry the small, one-burner stoves that take up about as much room as a two-pound coffee can. But that then requires that you also carry utensils and something to cook in. That works best when you’re riding something like a Gold Wing and pulling a trailer.

For everyone else, there are three options: eat at a restaurant near your campsite, pick up food that doesn’t need to be cooked, or carry one of those hand-held grills that fold over to hold food in place over the campfire.

And of course you need something to drink. A small water bottle or canteen is easy to carry, but hey, if you picked up a steak at the last town it’s pretty darn nice to wash it down with some red wine. Just be sure to carry a corkscrew or buy wine with a twist-off cap.

All that other stuff you throw in the car when you go camping? Excess. You don’t have room to carry it and you really don’t need it. Sure, if there’s something else you feel you must have, and you can find room for it, take it. It’s your ride. Yes, it’s nice to have a hot cup of coffee first thing in the morning, but knowing that that cup is 20 miles down the road is a powerful incentive to get up, break camp, and get rolling right away.

For the Hard Core
The bottom line on motorcycle camping, as long as the weather is good, is that all you really need to do is pull over and throw your foam pad and sleeping bag out on the ground. Or on top of a picnic table.

Two other tips: Lacking the enclosure of a tent, sleeping in your helmet keeps bugs off your face, provides a pillow, and keeps your face out of the dirt. And sleeping in your rain suit keeps your clothes clean and dry.

Biker Quote for Today

Feel safe at night, sleep with a biker.

Compact is the word when it comes to two-up motorcycle camping.

Judy and I tried out two-up motorcycle camping once last year. It was OK for a first time and we learned a few things. Now we’re acting on what we’ve learned and planning to really do this thing this year.

Compact is key when it comes to two-up camping on a bike. I’ve been camping by myself on my motorcycles plenty of times and it’s easy. The bike has plenty of room to pack one sleeping bag, a tent, a foam pad, food, and whatever else you need. It’s totally different when you’re two-up.

When you go two-up you now need two sleeping bags, two foam pads, clothes etc. for two, food for two, and a significant part of your packing space–the seat behind you–is taken up with non-gear, i.e., your wife/spouse/friend, whatever. That’s why a lot of people who are serious about this pull a trailer, but that’s not something I have any interest in.

So compact is the word.

We had already bought two down sleeping bags because they squeeze down smaller than our fiber-fill bags. Now we bought two Thermarest self-inflating mattresses. The two of them take up less space than one of the pads I used to use. That’s a step in the right direction.

On our test run last year we learned one thing profoundly: Having no provision for breakfast or even coffee in the morning sucks. Figuring we were going close by and just overnight we had figured we could do without that kind of thing. “Cold camping” I believe it’s called. So we woke up at about 9,000 feet elevation and it was cold and we had no way to even have a hot cup of joe. Rather than enjoy our camping experience we quickly broke camp and rode over Guanella Pass to Georgetown and had breakfast there. We’re not going to do that again.

Asking around I found that the consensus is that the compact JetBoil cookstove is the way to go. It’s designed for backpackers, so it’s small and light-weight. We don’t care about weight on the bike but we do care about small. The JetBoil and its gas canister are probably smaller than a two-liter bottle of pop. So we got one of those and also some dehydrated camping meals. Now we’ll heat water in the evening and pour it in on the dehydrated food and that will be dinner, and at the least we’ll heat water in the morning for coffee. Of course this all eats up most of the space savings we made with the smaller pads.

Which brings us to the choice of bikes. We took the V-Strom last year because it’s the dual-sport bike and seemed the natural. Plus, it has two very large Givi side bags that hold a lot, and I have a top bag on the rear as well. It might still be the bike of choice, especially if we’re going somewhere where we’ll have to be on a lot of gravel.

We do want to try the Concours, too, however. There’s no top bag, but unlike the V-Strom it is easy to strap a bunch of stuff on the rear, behind Judy. Plus, when you’re strapping stuff on the back, larger or awkward sizes are not much issue, whereas they are if you’re trying to get something inside something else. The two side bags are quite large, too, so I’m thinking it should certainly hold as much as the V-Strom. We’ll try the Concours on a trip where we know we won’t need to do gravel. The Concours hates gravel. Hates it!

I’m not sure if we’ll be getting more stuff or not. A tent that packs down smaller would be good on the V-Strom, but on the Concours it’s no issue. Less bulky clothing specifically designed for this sort of thing could save space. We’ll see.

Right now, though, we’re just waiting for warmer weather. I had hoped to get out for my first ride of the year today but freezing rain overnight and cold temps early in the day persuaded me otherwise. Camping weather–June–is still a ways off. Patience.

Biker Quote for Today

Companion wanted. Male motocrosser seeks caring and generous lady with her own dirt bike. Please send photo of dirt bike.

Two people really can go camping on one motorcycle.

Things didn’t go exactly as planned but by golly, we set out to go camping two-up on the Suzuki V-Strom 650 and by golly we did it. And most importantly, we picked up some pointers for test number two, presumably coming up later this summer.

Our start on Sunday was delayed a bit by light rain and heavy wind, but then things cleared. Still, off in the west it looked very wet.

We made it almost to Conifer before looking wet became getting wet so we pulled off to suit up. That’s when the first complication arose. We were planning on doing some hiking while up in the hills so I just wore my hiking boots. What I didn’t realize is that while I can get my rain pants on over any of my motorcycle boots, they don’t fit over the hiking boots. So there I was sitting alongside the highway in the rain taking my boots off in order to get my rain pants on. Now I know.

Of course, this is Colorado, so by the time we got to Bailey the sky was clear. We rode on to Grant and stopped there to take off our rain gear now that it was dry. We were heading to a campground up along Guanella Pass, so at Grant we turned onto what is on that side Park County Road 62. It’s also known as Guanella Pass Scenic Byway or just simply Guanella Pass Road. I knew the first 3-4 miles is gravel but that’s why we were riding the V-Strom. And we stopped at a roadside stand there in Grant to pick up some food for dinner. No cooking on this trip.

We got to our campground, got set up, and did all the things you do while camping: hiking, hanging out in camp, meeting your neighbors, whatever, and then sleeping.

Come morning I was really feeling the decision not to try to cook on this trip. We were above 9,000 feet and it was cold. We had no way to start a fire and no way to fix coffee. I’m going to have to figure out how to make that happen next time. So we ate our oranges and granola bars and just relaxed while waiting for the rain fly on the tent to dry. Then we packed up to go.

We had been looking at maps of the area and had seen that the road right by the campground runs up to Geneva City, a ghost town up there that probably has something to do with this area being known as Geneva Basin. We figured that since we were on the V-Strom, let’s go check it out.

Well, right off the bat the road was terrible. I’ve been on roads that bad myself on dual-sport bikes but with Judy on with me I just didn’t have the confidence–or foolhardiness–to chance it. This was already the first time I’d ridden off the pavement with a passenger and the last thing in the world I want to do is injure my wife. So forget Geneva City.

We headed back to the main road and headed up the pass. It was still pretty early on Monday morning, about 9:30 or 10 o’clock, so we pretty much had the entire road to ourselves. We took our time, enjoyed the scenery and the ride, and headed on down the other side toward Georgetown.

A few miles out of Georgetown we passed a young fellow with a skateboard (they call these particular ones “long boards”) and it appeared he was planning to coast down the hill. He was wearing a helmet but besides that just a t-shirt and jeans. We kept on going but a little while later, sure enough, he came ripping past us on the board and disappeared around the curves ahead of us. With all the 180-degree hairpin turns and the beauty, we weren’t in any hurry but he had a totally different agenda. How he maneuvered those turns I have no idea. We saw him and some buddies preparing to go back up just outside of town.

In Georgetown we stopped for a proper breakfast–with hot coffee–and enjoyed sitting out on a cafe patio on Monday morning while so many other folks were back at the grind. Then we cruised on home.

So what did we learn this first time? 1) Carry a writing implement so you can fill out the name and license plate stuff on the campground registration. 2) Bring bug repellent. 3) We’ve got to figure out some way to make coffee. 4) Don’t overstuff the bags. Even these Givi bags leaked a little because they were overpacked and bulging. 5) Two people can go camping on one motorcycle.

Next time we’ll try it on the Concours. I can tie the foam pads and tent on the back–I’ve done that kind of thing before–and there is still enough room in the side bags for other stuff once the sleeping bags go in. Maybe even enough room for a one-burner stove that fits inside a cook pot; I still don’t think we’ll be cooking dinner, though. And we’ll just pick a campground that doesn’t require an extended ride on gravel to get to it. The Concours hates gravel.

Hey, we did it!

Biker Quote for Today

“Those KLRs are full of potential. Just takes a rider…” — Jimmy Lewis

Once I got the tent and one sleeping bag in there wasn't much room left in the side bag.

My wife, Judy, and I enjoy camping and we’ve talked for a long time about going camping on the motorcycle. Getting more serious about it, we recently bought down sleeping bags that are much more compact than the ones we’ve been using. Plus, with the V-Strom we now have the capability of going on gravel and dirt roads. We decided this weekend was the time to give it a try.

Now, I’ve camped on the bike by myself since forever. It’s easy to get everything on that one person needs. Going two-up, however, is entirely different. You’ve got to get twice as much personal stuff in and the passenger takes up space where camping gear usually goes. I saw a presentation a couple years ago at the Overland Expo where a couple who had ridden around the world on their KLR 650 talked about packing. It made sense then but now I don’t see how they did it.

We’ve both cut back our work hours to four days a week so in order to avoid crowds we figured we’d just go on an overnight somewhere close by, leaving on Sunday and returning on Monday. I’m writing this on Sunday morning and we’ll be leaving in about an hour.

On Saturday I figured I’d better start loading up the bike and see how it all fits together. The answer turned out to be not all that good. As you can see in the photo, I got the tent in one side bag with one sleeping bag. The other bag holds one foam pad and the other sleeping bag. I had nowhere to go with the second foam pad except to bungee it on on top of one of the sidebags. You can see that green pad in the photo.

The top bag holds our rain gear and with all this stuff loaded there’s not a lot of room for other camping gear. For instance, I have a little one-burner gas stove and it would fit but that would mean we would also need at least one pot, utensils, a couple plates or bowls, and probably some very small cooler to put food in along with blue ice. Trying to figure this out was driving me crazy until I decided that this is just a first test run and I’m not going to over-think it. We’re going to carry dinner that doesn’t require cooking and for breakfast we’ll just get by with granola bars, oranges, and water. For one morning I’ll get by without coffee first thing.

Now, truth is, there is still a good amount of space left in the side bags. Although the one side is pretty well taken up by the tent and sleeping bag, there is a lot of width to the bags and the other half of the clam shell is still empty. This may yet work out better than it appears to at first.

The other thing that occurs to me is that the Concours may turn out to be the better bike for camping, as long as we don’t need to go on gravel or dirt roads more than a very short distance. I know I could strap the tent and both pads on the back of the bike and then the sleeping bags and a whole lot more stuff could go in the side bags. We’ll probably do a second test run on the Kawi later this summer.

So we’re going to see how this works. I’ll tell you all about it soon.

Biker Quote for Today

You’re a biker wannabe if you won’t ride down a gravel road.

Are you a camper? Is sleeping on the ground in a tent something you like to do? I know that for a lot of people the answer is no. Heck, even for the guys I’ve gone camping with for 30 years the answer lately is no.

That’s really too bad because motorcycle camping is a great, and incredibly inexpensive way to do some terrific traveling. It also allows you to be more flexible in your trip. With hotels and motels you usually need to have a reservation, which locks you in.

In the earlier days of the OFMC we didn’t plan. Before we left we picked a direction to head and we took off. Then we would just go until we decided to stop. Or we’d go in this direction until we decided to go in that direction. Two things made this possible: there were only three of us and we all carried tents, sleeping bags, and foam pads or air mattresses. On more than one occasion that gear was a life saver when we rolled into some town late at night and found no room at the inn. There’s always some place to set up your tent.

And it’s not like you need a lot of gear. We never carried things like stoves or cooking implements. We would just eat in town before riding on to the camping site we chose, or, if close enough, we would set up camp and ride back in for dinner. Then in the morning we’d get up in a pretty quick manner, load up, and head into town for that cup of coffee we all had foremost in our minds.

Some people do carry more than we did. I know some folks on the big rigs have room for cooking gear. And then there are people like Rider magazine’s Clement Salvadori who likes to travel alone and pull off somewhere in the wild and drink wine with his campfire dinner. Clem really knows how to do motorcycle camping.

If you’re even remotely interested in camping on your bike you really ought to give it a whirl. I’ve made a point on the website to help anyone so inclined to find good motorcycle-accessible campgrounds. There are a lot of campgrounds in Colorado that are not motorcycle-accessible and they’re not included. If I’ve included it you can be assured that a campground is accessible on two wheels. There’s no better way to really experience Colorado.

Biker Quote for Today

The best alarm clock is sunshine on chrome.