Gear List for the Ultimate Mountain Bike Road Trip: Camping
I'm back today to finish sharing my gear list for the Ultimate Mountain Bike Road Trip, this time focusing on camping gear and the miscellaneous things that enhance a road trip experience. You can check out part one, Mountain Biking Gear Packing List here.
Camping Road Trip Gear List // tahoefabulous.com
I mentioned that Greyson and I got married this summer, and our Ultimate Mountain Bike Road Trip was how we celebrated our honeymoon. We registered at REI for our wedding, and our generous friends and family helped us really upgrade our camping set up. Our amazing wedding gifts, plus some big upgrades we've made over the past few years meant that our car camping set up is pretty luxurious. When you're on the road for a month, nice gear makes a big difference.
Camping Gear List
Sleeping Set Up: Your sleeping set up is one of the most critical parts of an enjoyable camping road trip. I've had my sleeping bag, the Sierra Designs Zissou Sleeping Bag, which has Dridown, a water repellant down filling. This has all the advantages of down (fluffy, very packable) with the advantages of synthetic (can keep you warm even if it gets a little wet). The biggest wedding present upgrade was the Nemo Cosmo Insulated sleeping pad. This sleeping pad is wide, warm, cushy, quiet and not crinkly, and easy to inflate with the integrated foot pump. For a pillow, I got the NEMO Fillo backpacking pillow. A camping pillow is never going to be as supportive as a regular pillow, but this one is pretty good. I finally got a sleeping bag liner, which was really nice for variable temperatures and keeping my sleeping bag from getting super gross when we went a long time without showering. I have the Sea To Summit Expander Travel Liner.
Kitchen Gear: The kitchen item we used the most on the road trip wasn't something that we registered for, but it was awesome - Sea To Summit X Mug. We filled a lot of growlers with beer, and then poured the beer into these folding cups. They're also really stable, which is nice on uneven ground and picnic tables. We also got a lot of use out of the classic Coleman 2-Burner Stove. For our cookset, we used the GSI Outdoors Pinnacle Cookset, which has everything two people could need. The Snow Peak Cutting Board Set was another great addition to our camp kitchen. And I'm sure we would have gotten food poisoning several times without the YETI Tundra Cooler which kept our food cold for days at a time with only a couple of bags of ice.
Tent: During this trip, I joked to Greyson, "This is how people end up buying motorhomes, isn't it?" I was referring to our huge, luxurious tent. We have the Big Agnes Tensleep Station 4, a four person tent. We're both tall people (I'm 5'11", he's 6'3"), and a two person tent is not made for two people our size. This tent is big enough for us to stretch out, have our clothing bags inside with us, and have room to spare. The Tensleep also has two doors, which was a must have for me. It has two vestibules, one of which is large enough to take off wet gear, while staying dry, which is really nice for camping in wet places. The tent is huge - which means it has a large footprint and only packs down to the size of a large duffel bag. It's very tall - I can almost stand up in it, but it has held up in the wind really well. The price is high, but even the small details are well designed, like plenty of very reflective guy lines and multiple ways to set up the "front door". If you can't make the full commitment to #vanlife, the Big Agnes Tensleep is the next best thing.
Battery/Solar Panel: Not going to lie, I like to stay connected. Also, since we were gone for so long, there were points when we both needed to check in with work, so we had an array of technology that occasionally needed to be charged. This was easy with our Goal Zero Yeti 150 Portable Power Station and the Goal Zero Nomad 20 Solar Panel (similar here). It was easy to keep the portable power station charged up - we pretty much never dipped below 80% between our occasional motel stops and the solar panel.
Seating: I spent a lot of time in our ENO DoubleNest Hammock - occasionally I even let Greyson use it. I tried to convince Greyson that we should register for smaller, packable chairs, but he convinced me that we should stick with his big, bulky REI chairs. He was right. Having big, comfortable chairs to relax in was so nice at the end of a long day.
Roof Box: We needed every inch of storage in the Toaster for this road trip, and the Yakima RocketBox Pro 11 Rooftop Cargo Box helped increase our storage area. It's not the fanciest roof box on the market, but it worked well. It's not as loud as some roof boxes - we didn't even notice a sound. It didn't reduce gas mileage by that much, but the Toaster isn't the most aerodynamic vehicle to begin with.
Lighting: We had two sources of light on this trip: our Petzl Tikka headlamp and the extremely awesome MPOWERD Luci color changing inflatable solar lanterns. We registered for one of these, and somehow ended up with three. I'm definitely not complaining - they all got used and have been a hit on every camping trip we've gone on since.B
ike Rack: An easy to use bike rack is critical, and nothing is easier than the Kuat Racks NV tray style. This rack comes with a flimsy cable lock, which we bolster with the Kryptonite 999546 lock for extra security.
Miscellaneous: There are a few more odds and ends that helped make this road trip awesome - the Patagonia Black Hole Duffel, whose water resistant nature came in handy during a rainstorm in Whistler, the ridiculously awesome YETI Rambler can cooler, Packtowl RobeTowl, which made changes at the trailhead much easier, and our storage system of bins, two heavy duty ones for camping stuff and biking stuff and a collapsible one for our kitchen.So there it is - my in depth packing list for the Ultimate Mountain Bike Road Trip. Don't forget, you can check out my list of Mountain Bike Gear here. Did I miss anything?
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