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.
I have been TRYING all summer to take my nephew on a camping trip, but it just hadn’t been working out and has been extremely hot lately. I have also been wanting to try bikepacking for a while so I decided to see if my nephew would be able to come on a short trip with me – win win right?! 🙂
In case you don’t know what bikepacking is, it is like backpacking except you load up all your camping gear in panniers (bags that attach to your bike) so you don’t have to carry it on your back….which I probably should have explained to my sister because she mentioned she was trying to fit his sleeping bag into his backpacking bag. I had to laugh at the image of my nephew riding his new bike down the trail with his giant backpacking pack on his back. I reassured my sister that I would be carrying everything on my bike and he could just focus on riding his. 🙂
I decided to take him on the York Heritage Rail Trail – which is a trail I have ridden a few times before. The plan was to park at Glatfelters Station Parking Lot around mile 13 and then we would bike Indian Rock Campground which is right off the trail around mile 18, camp overnight, then bike back the next day. This seemed like a reasonable distance to go for an 8 year old on a new bike and myself hauling all the gear – and it is a FLAT trail which is a plus!
Kevin and I set out to do the entire 20 mile Capital Area Greenbelt trail which creates a loop around the city of Harrisburg, PA. I was excited to check this trail out because I was considering doing this trail as the yearly group ride that I organize instead of the Lehigh Gorge Trail which is the one we have always done. I am really glad I checked this trail out prior to taking an entire group of people. There were some fairly steep hills and lots of road riding which some people who come are very uncomfortable with.
We parked at City Island and took the walker/biker bridge across to the start of the trail. The first few miles were completely flat and followed the Susquehanna River. There was a lot of artwork, painted dinosaurs and a cow – I HAD to stop and get a quick picture of the Triceratops that was across the street because they are my personal favorite dinosaur – FYI. 🙂
Kevin and I got up early to pack the final things we would need for our trip and put them in the truck. We gave Willow (my cat) her insulin shot and set out for Stowe, VT to try to hike Mt Mansfield before they closed the toll road at 5- I knew we would be cutting it close and my heart sunk when I punched the address into the GPS and saw the estimated arrival time was 3:30- that was over an hour what my phone GPS said!! “We’re not gonna make it” I said – it takes approx 20 mins to drive up the toll road – plus let’s say 2 hrs to hike and enjoy the views and then 20 mins to drive back down- the website says all cars must start driving down by 4:45 at the latest because the gate closes at 5. This did not give us enough time. Kevin said his GPS the time always goes down as he drives. We figured we would give it a try and see if we made it- I wanted to be there by 2 to be safe but knew that just wasn’t possible. On the long drive I started looking for options for plan B.
I joined a cycling club a few weeks ago which I LOVE – I have met so many awesome people, although I have to admit I was worried that on my hybrid I wouldn’t be able to keep up. Turns out I had no problems (and they gave me a 20% off coupon to a bike shop which includes bikes—-could we see a road bike in my future?? Probably yes! 🙂 WAHOO!) Anyway – I have done a few rides with this group – the problem? There is no time to stop to take pictures and too much beautiful scenery along the way! LOL!! I knew an upcoming ride was going to go right by this awesome wildflower patch that everyone has been buzzing about lately, but I couldn’t bear it if I couldn’t stop to take a picture – or 100 – so I decided to bike there myself before the group ride. I talked my mom into going along so we picked a spot that was fairly close by to park and cycle there. Now you can just drive up and park in the grass, but what’s the fun in that?? 🙂
Since the weather has been so nice I decided to try to finish biking the on road section of the Conestoga Trail. I asked my mom if she wanted to go with me because we would be going through a few more covered bridges and I knew she would like to see them – but she is very uncomfortable riding on the roads. We decided to have my dad drive the route so we could see just how busy the roads were. When we got to the end of the on road section we decided to bike back to Oregon Dairy (which is where I stopped my ride last time) and meet my dad there for lunch. It seemed like we would be going down more hills than up. There was a short on road section that we skipped because it was pretty busy, but we found a good place to pull over and jump on our bikes to start our journey! Although some of the roads had a bit of traffic, for the most part we saw very few cars because we were on back roads in Lancaster County. We actually saw a bunch of other cyclists and some horse and buggies!
I signed up for the Life is Good Duathlon awhile ago because I wanted to try a multi sport event without the pressure of swimming. For a duathlon you run/bike/run a certain amount of miles whereas a triathlon is swim/bike/run. Both a du and a tri have an area in-between called transition where you set things up ahead of time for the next part of the race. You place everything on a folded towel next to your bike. For example, if doing a tri, you have things set up so that when you run in from the swim, everything you need for your biking portion is ready to go. Then when you finish the bike portion everything else is set up for your run. There are many different lengths of races to choose from so I started looking for a short course aimed for beginners. I stumbled upon the Life is Good Duathlon at Peace Valley Park – there were 2 lengths to choose from – short (2 mile run, 5.5 mile bike, 2 mile run) and long (3 mile run, 11 mile bike, 3 mile run). I decided to go for the short course as I had never even attempted anything like this before and didn’t know what to expect or how my body would handle jumping from one activity to the other back to back. I did a little research and it seemed like it would be a good beginner course to try. I assumed both the run and bike would be fairly flat as it stated on their website that there was a hill that was too much for most people so they rerouted the course this year to take that hill out. Well you know what they say about assuming right? 🙂
I have decided to challenge myself this year – not only did I sign up and complete my 1st 15K trail run, but I signed up for a duathlon, triathlon – and I signed up for the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati next May with my sister! 🙂
Earth Day is such a great day to celebrate – you don’t need to decorate, send cards or buy presents – actually NOT doing any of these things is best! 🙂
The Conestoga Trail is a little known trail in PA that is 63 miles long, starting in Furnace Hills, PA where it meets the Horseshoe Trail and goes to York, PA where it meets the Mason-Dixon Trail. It is considered an endangered trail because big sections of the northern part of the trail have been rerouted onto roads due to landowners revoking trail access. I can’t say that I blame them – on the one hand I want people to get outside and explore, but on the other I’m not so sure I would want people trampling through my private property either. I can see both sides.
While the southern most section of the trail is considered the most scenic, I decided I was going to do the whole thing in sections- why not? 🙂
I began with the on road section of the trail (Which is near the end of section A of the trail guide) as it is hunting season and a big portion of the start of the trail is closed until hunting is over – this way I could get the “boring” on road section of the trail out of the way first while the days are still nice. I found out this section is ANYTHING but boring. While some of the roads are fairly busy (which is why I decided to bike it instead of walk), the views of farmlands, animals and covered bridges were amazing – good old Lancaster County! This section of the trail is a little hilly with one section I had to get off and push my bike up – it was steep even to walk it! The only other thing besides cars you need to watch out for on the trail were the road apples which if you are from PA you will know this is a nice way to say horse poop from the Amish horse and buggies. 🙂
blisters and bug bites 