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 decided to check out some of the York County Heritage Rail Trail on our bikes today. I absolutely LOVE rail trails as you can usually cover some pretty decent mileage on flat terrain with amazing views. The trail is approximately 20 miles long and also connects at the Mason Dixon Line to the Northern Central Railroad Trail (AKA the Torrey C. Brown trail) which is a 20 mile rail trail in Maryland. I had done a portion of these trails in the beginning of the summer with my Mom, but there were sections that I had seen pictures of online that I wanted to check out – so we grabbed our bikes and headed out!
blisters and bug bites 