Dry Run: Camping in the Allegheny Mountains

Tomorrow we’re heading out east. We’re aiming in the direction of the Allegheny Mountains, but we’ll see how things turn out. The real point behind tomorrow is to make sure all of our gear is working how we’re expecting it to work. We’re going to be trying out just about all of our gear for the first time tomorrow.

Most of our camping in the past can only be described as “camping.” It was never any backpacking or anything. It was car camping. We’ve gotten so bad before that the last time we went out to X-Day we took En’s dad’s F-150. All I have to say is that the bed (a full-sized bed) was full of our crap. Before, we went out with my A6 fully packed, Tetris-style, and and to leave stuff behind.

Well, all that changes now. Motorcycle camping is a lot like backpack camping as far as I can tell. Small and light are good in both cases. For 2-up motorcycle camping it would seem that volume is even more important than weight. Obviously we’re not going to be carrying blocks of lead (excepting the battery of course), but where to put stuff is the question. Heck, you can even buy 80 liter backpacks ( Gregory Palisade 80 Pack - I’m sure they have bigger too) – that’s as much space as I have in both panniers. That’s for both me and En.

As for it being dry… well, here’s the prediction from the national weather service for tomorrow when we’re going to be leaving:

Dry run indeed. In a way it’s a good thing. It lets us try things out in worse than ideal conditions. Lets see how this turns out!