ULOG #8: Bike Camping Ride to Evangola State Park
I can't believe it's already Labor Day weekend. There are still a few more weeks of summer. I don't know who convinced Americans of this sick idea that summer ends on Labor Day. Wrong! It goes until the first day of fall, the autumnal equinox which falls on September 22 this year. Summer is my favorite season. Stop trying kill it off before it's over.
Well I still want to celebrate Labor Day, but to avoid all the weekend summer killers we decided to go bike camping on Thursday. Three of us rode out to Evangola State Park, which is about 55 km away. This happens to be be two of the friends I rode with on Memorial Day as well, which is the holiday people wrongly think is the beginning of summer despite being a month early.
The lake is beautiful but the part shown above is basically a highway. It would be a much nicer view if it was a bike path along the lake so we wouldn't have to look out for traffic. This is part of a state bike route, the Seaway Trail. I'm glad the state encourages cycling, but please try harder to make the roads safe for us. We actually have to avoid a large part of Route 5 (part of this route) because cars are going 55+ mph with no shoulder and four full lanes of traffic. They are finally building a bike path alongside part of that. I assume it won't be open until next year.
We got to the park and pitched our tents before heading back to the store to get food and beer. They don't allow beer (who doesn't drink while camping?) so we figured we'd empty the panniers first so we could fill those with beer and food. The campgrounds also had a minimum 2-night stay so we paid for more than we needed as we all had to get back Friday so we could work Saturday morning. I really don't get the point of staying 2 nights. Would we just hand around the campsite all day? I'd rather ride further to another campsite. In our case we were just heading home the next day.
Rather than pay for firewood, we just gathered dry sticks from the woods. When we got back, it turned out a neighbor left us their firewood before checking out of their campsite.
We locked up our bike for the night to get some sleep. Unfortunately I pulled some muscle in my back recently, which made it hard to sleep. I am usually pretty comfortable with a light inflatable mattress but the more I relaxed on my back, the more it hurt. Eventually I just had to lay on my side.
It's amazing how anything can taste great in the morning when camping. This instant coffee I made was terrible but I enjoyed it after waking up at camp. This was the first time I used this gas stove. I got it cheap on Amazon but I think I'm happy with it.
We had a discussion about whether we should have been able to rent a yurt at a discount since they were all empty anyway. N said a yurt wouldn't have air conditioning so why stay inside rather than just camp in a field? After going to look at it, I saw that there was an air conditioner, so N said it wasn't really a yurt then. You know, I have to agree. That's not a yurt as much as a cabin isn't camping. I'm happy to sleep in a tent. Besides, it wasn't too hot or too cold anyway.
We made some great camp food the night before. We cut up some potatoes and onions and cooked them in aluminum foil on the fire. We had some Jiffy Pop popcorn. We forgot to buy beans. But there's nothing like a greasy pizza to make up for all the energy expended on a long day of bike riding. This was only a few miles from the campsite, so this was just right to get some energy for the ride back. Oh, we added fries and mozzarella sticks as well.
We took the same route home as we took out to the campsite. It's never as exciting riding back. Maybe I should do a loop next time.
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Reading this has me itching for my end of month supported tour over in Kentucky. We'll be touring some bourbon distilleries on bike. Should be fun. Thanks for sharing!
Oh that sounds like a cool ride. I'm going to try to get something together in a couple weeks for solo ride
Oh man, what a place! Just looking the colors on the photos makes me happy. That road seems pretty ok to me compared some of the ones I have cycled, just need to be extra careful, which I agree is annoying.
Btw your roll top panniers looks like the type I need, are they water proof?
They're waterproof Ortliebs. I'm having some issues as the plastic inside it bent and caused the corner to hit my spokes. I'm considering taking them back to see if they can replace them. They were kind of expensive and I bought them expecting years of use. I've used them twice and both times they've bent out of shape and hit my spokes.
Hmmm, weird. I'm thinking about makind mine, just need to figure out the best material for that.
Look up Venzo waterproof roll down panniers. They're much cheaper than Ortliebs, $45 USD each when I bought my Venzo panniers. I used them for a year with no problem except that one was damaged when I was hit by that car. That's when I decided to drop a bunch of money on Ortliebs. I think it may be the rack design that damaged my Ortliebs, but I want to exchange them for ones that aren't bent.
I'll look that up, but if I find a way to build my own I'll post about it. There are some tough materials out there that could be used, the issue would be sealing the seams
Lovely, What bike are you riding there my mate? Looks like a specialized AWOL almost :)
I'm riding a Fuji Touring bike. One of the other bikes in the photos is a Specialized, but I don't think you were referring to it. The third bike is a custom build that my friend made herself.
Custom build is awesome though, something I would like to do myself one say. Heard great words about Fuji though!
Their collection of bikes is impressive. I'm still hoping to learn to do a full rebuild. Custom building a frame someday would be even more cool. The Fuji Touring is a great bike for a reasonable price. Mine was $750 USD in 2017, but they raised the price to $1000 for the 2018 models. I