I finally did a thing last weekend that I’d been thinking about doing for ages. I strapped a bunch of crap on my bicycle and headed out for an overnight trip. And it was great. If you’ve ever been scrolling instagram or reddit or whatever and thought about doing this, I can’t recommend it enough. What follows is a brief description of how to do this yourself if you’re so inclined, because you probably should.
Like I said, I’ve been jealously eyeballing bikepacking routes and rigs for ages now, thinking about where I’d go and what kind of bike I could get for it. I’ve got a bit of an itch to do a several-day long unsupported trek next year, likely in northern Michigan or Ohio; but before I bite that off I wanted to get my feet wet doing a shorter overnight trek closer to home (and a rescue by my loving and supportive spouse should the need arise).
First, let me say, I’m very jealous of all of you oppos that live in the middle-west or the west coast, and all of that sweet, sweet BLM land you are so close to! I’ve been doing a fair bit of dispersed camping this year, but there aren’t too many options for camping out in the middle of nowhere in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Almost anything that’ll put you far from somebody’s RV is a good 3+ hour drive from Detroit.
That said, there are a few state parks and campgrounds with tent-only ‘hike-in’ sites that are a bit spaced out from the normal RV-heavy campgrounds on most parks. So, with the afore mentioned goal of being close to a rescue should any serious trouble come up, I settled on a ~60 mile round trip route outside of Ann Arbor. I often end up driving out this way to get some good mountain biking, so I somewhat knew the area already and figured it should work.
So I planned out a preliminary route, starting at a park-n-ride on the south side of Ann Arbor, heading north through the city and then heading west towards Pinckney. I’d grab lunch downtown, and then head for the campground in the afternoon. I planned to add a few extra miles by taking Huron River Drive as we left Ann Arbor, which turned out to be an inspiration as it was both gorgeous this time of year and also filled with cool cars out for a weekend drive. I added a slight detour over the Barton Dam on the way back. It added a bit of milage but it was absolutely worth it for the scenery!
I also had a good buddy of mine come with me on the trip, which was awesome for a couple of reasons. First, I’m apparently an extrovert and prefer the presence of other humans. I don’t think I realized this fact before COVID, but it’s definitely a thing. And second, and maybe even more importantly, it’d be nice to have another person to help trouble shoot any problems with, even if I’m definitely the bike mechanic amongst us. Sometimes it’s just good to have a buddy there to nod and say, “yeah, that looks good to me” when you’re attempting some janky trail-side fix.
The two of us took wildly different approaches to the gear side of things. I’m definitely a bike nerd, and a gear nerd on top of that. My buddy, on the other hand, is on the cheaper side of things and was interested in doing the trip with what he had. At first he was going to try the trip with a single speed mountain bike he had bought from BikesDirect a few years back. I had been working with him to figure out if we could tweak his gear ratio to get it a bit faster for road riding when another friend of ours offered up his geared CX bike for us, so we took him up on it and I’m glad we did. Turns out when you’re loaded up with gear, even mild hills become significant and you want some gears to stay in your optimal cadence.
I was all about researching different bag options and figuring out where I wanted to put all my stuff. Meanwhile, my buddy just borrowed a couple extra panniers I had and called it good! I think either option would work for most people on a short trip like this. Packing everything on a rear rack is fine, but it definitely compromises the weight balance of the bike quite a bit, and spreading out your gear across the whole bike will give you much more predictable handling. That said, having so many more stuff-stashing options definitely lead me to overpack a bit. It was also cold, so I probably packed a few more layers than I actually needed for security.
The pack list was reasonably short, but somehow filled the bike up quick:
- Sleeping bag + ground pad
- Tent for him, hammock for me
- Extra quilt for warmth
- Dry clothes, puffy jacket, gloves + hats
- Camp stove + dehydrated meals
- Hatchet + fire starter
- Water
- Bourbon
I packed all my gear and distributed it as best as I could with the heaviest stuff in the middle of the bike and the lighter stuff on the fringes. Clothing and my sleeping arrangements went into waterproof dry bags just in case we got wet along the way. I also arranged my orange bags on my back rack and my left fork for extra visibility. We had a bit of gravel roads and a bit of pedestrian / cycling trails on our route but about two-thirds of the trip we shared the roads with cars. For the most part it was rural roads with varying degrees of shoulder and luckily, the skinniest roads were also the least traveled.
Our total milage ended up being 29 and change on day one, and 30+ on day two. We probably spent about 2.5-3 hours in the saddle each day, and broke that up with two or three rest stops along the way. My biggest take away from the trip was despite the cold weather, I didn’t need nearly as many warm layers as I thought I would. My buddy’s minimalist packing strategy turned out just fine. He ended up breaking a spoke on his rear wheel about ten miles from the finish on day two. It was probably due to the extra weight hung way out back on his bike, and the fact that it had a couple broken spokes when he first borrowed it that I hastily fixed the night before we left. I’d carried almost every tool with me but didn’t have a cassette tool to get at that spoke so we just bent it inwards toward the hub and hoped we could limp it home. We made it back just fine. I think wheels are built more strongly than we give them credit for.
All told, it was a fantastic trip that just left me itching for more. Typical! If you’ve been considering something like this yourself, do it! Just pack some spare parts, a change of clothes and hit the road!