Bikepacking – What I Packed

I have had a lot of people ask what I brought with me on my bikepacking trip so I figured I’d put together a quick list.  The following items are what my nephew and I brought for our overnight trip.

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Camping and Trails At Watkins Glen

I can not say enough great things about this campground and State Park – I love it here.  This trip was not the first and certainly won’t be the last time I will visit.  The campsites are large with a picnic table, fire ring and room to park your car.  There are flush toilets, warm showers and electric in the bath house.

I brought my friend Cathy with – this was her first camping trip and she LOVED it.  We were driving up right after work so I called and told them we would most likely get there late.  They told us that wouldn’t be a problem, just to set up when we got there and check in in the morning.  We ended up arriving at 9:30 which meant unfortunately it was dark.  Setting up the condo (as my tent is lovingly nicknamed) in the dark is a pain – actually setting up the condo in the day time is sort of a pain because it’s so huge and old.  As we were putting it together we noticed one of the tent poles was missing the hollow metal end that fits into the peg attached to the tent – bummer!  We couldn’t find it anywhere so we ended up rigging that side of the tent up with extra stakes and the ring attached to the tent that the stakes go through and trying to jam the pole in the hard ground – hey it worked – even if it was a bit lop sided!

 

it held!
 

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Watkins Glen State Park

Watkins Glen State Park is one of my favorite places to visit.  The campgrounds are wonderful, bathrooms are clean with flush toilets and running water, and the hiking trails are great.  The best trail is called the Gorge Trail and is the one that everyone comes to hike.  The trail is carved right into sides of the gorge and goes up over 800 steps over about a mile and a half.  It goes over, under and through 19 waterfalls along the way.  Although the waterfalls weren’t flowing as much as I have seen in the past, it was still an extremely beautiful place to visit!

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Why I LOVE REI

So you may know that REI has an incredible return policy – they will basically take ANYTHING back as long as you have proof of purchase, the item is in fairly decent condition and it’s within a year since you bought it.

In July I bought a new pair of Merrell hiking boots online because my Keens were pretty worn out.  I wore them on a few day hikes and the 30 mile backpacking trip on the Old Loggers Path.  The shoes seemed a bit narrow (I do not have wide feet so this seemed strange) but I figured they would stretch out after I broke them in a bit.  Well they didn’t – after my trip on the Old Loggers Path, I NEVER had so many blisters on my feet in my life.  It was awful – the entire inner sides of BOTH of my feet had massive blisters on them – from the tips of my big toes to my heel.  It was nuts – and painful — and coincidentally how I decided on the name of my blog – I said to my family when I was done with the hike “I have never had so many blisters and bug bites in my life!”  Then I thought – ‘Hmmm…that’s kinda catchy….sorta gross, but catchy!’ and TA DA!  My blog was born!

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Just because you buy the same brand of shoes as Bear Grylls, DOES NOT make you Bear Grylls :/

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Survivor – Lycoming County

I am a HUGE Survivor fan so when a friend (Sara) invited me up to her cabin to have a survivor weekend I didn’t hesitate to say yes.  Her family was also really into Survivor and believe me they went ALL OUT for this weekend.  She told me that her parents set up actual homemade games inspired by the show with tribes, immunity idols, eliminations and all.

I drove up with Sara and a few other friends.  Let me tell you, her lovely parents spent so much time and energy into making this weekend as authentic as possible for us – her mom even carved the immunity idol herself – making a bear out of a log with a CHAINSAW!!  It was awesome!  Oh and Sara made fake immunity idols for us before we got up there – we never did get to play them – LOL!

SHH! we made fake hidden immunity idols!!

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