Riding Solo 12 - Remote Forest Camping in Montana

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I took a dirt road that led about 30 miles up to this lake and it was a rough gnarly mountainous road to get here .

And I'm camped out in the middle of the woods tonight .

So it was a spectacular day .

I left Glacier National Park this morning where I was camped on the river and then headed across some of the flatlands of , I would say Central Montana and then back into the mountains again to where I'm going to finish up the night here at this place .

And this is just awesome .

This is definitely the most remote that I've been so far on this trip .

So the sun is going down .

I'm still in my riding gear .

I'm going to set up camp before it gets completely dark .

What an epic day of riding today .

Just so good .

So nice to be out here camping .

Have you guys along with me ?

We're going to cook something simple tonight .

We might even build a fire .

Yes , we're gonna build a fire .

I really like having this little G si folding table .

It kind of makes me feel civilized when I'm out doing this .

And , you know , it's practical , like , it really makes a difference , keeping my food up off the ground and having a level surface to , to cook on or to eat on or to prepare food .

It's just one of those little luxuries on a , on a trip like this .

And I'm , you know , riding a big 1200 G S .

So I feel like I can carry a little bit more or at least as much as any other adventure bike .

But , you know , you still have to be reasonable in what you bring .

So I would consider this sort of one of my luxuries on this trip .

Um , and also maybe the fact that I have both a hammock and a tent , but I did forego the sleeping pad sacrifices , you know .

So there we go , that'll work .

I'm still going to use the fire box stove to cook on just because you know what I'm having fun with it .

I'm getting used to it .

It's super cool .

You just slide out the fire sticks here , it opens up like a book , the ashtray comes out the bottom and then it just goes like that and this bottom part just kind of goes down to provide a base for it .

There you go .

Simple as that .

Put the ashtray in the bottom here .

It's like that fire box .

Love it .

Tonight is a two fire night .

And I also really like this fire starter here .

This stuff is like magic , it just gets everything going so quickly .

So with this fire box stove , ideally , you want to have a bunch of straight sticks that are just kind of long and straight .

This is a small one , for example .

But the reason is , is that you can side feed like that and you just push them in as you go and it works really well .

Of course , you can feed it from the top .

But once I get a grill or something on the top , it's not quite as easy .

Although you can still fit them in underneath that .

So maybe we'll try that tonight .

So this part set up , I'm using , it's called a Billy Can .

A Billy Bush can or something like that .

It's , uh , it's really functional .

It's really cool .

They can cook a lot .

I have my coffee cup in here and a metal cup that nests my coffee cup nests inside of .

So I've got this metal cup and then my coffee cup nests the side of it and then my arrow press , that's my coffee set up and then some gloves for tending the fire and there's my lid for my coffee .

And then this case just sort of sits on the top of it and it has my little MS R stove and my coffee .

So we're gonna get some water boiling here .

Get that on the fire box for our dinner .

Tonight's dinner .

Is a , just add water dinner .

And one of the cool things with this pot here is that when you put the handle up , you can click these into place here and that kind of holds this handle in position .

So the handle doesn't get hot when you're cooking and you can very easily grab it .

And if you wanted to , you can even pour from it .

It's very sturdy .

In that sense , these little metal fire sticks are the simplest way to provide something to set your water on .

So if you were to look on a map , we're pretty much directly north of Livingston Montana up in the National Forest up there .

And as you can see , I did my afternoon stop like a good boy at the convenience store to load my Hydro flask up with some cold lager , which is still very cold and very tasty at the end of the day .

You know , I've kind of come to the conclusion that there are three things that I require at the end of a long day's ride , cold beer , a hot meal and a comfortable bed .

I think I'm going to have all three of them here tonight .

Hm .

Yeah .

So , on the menu tonight , we've got some Indian Vindaloo and all you have to do is tear the pouch two inches to vent and heat on high for one .

That's the microwave .

Yeah .

Boil sealed pouch in water for five minutes .

Well , there you go .

I think I'm gonna have to add some more water though .

That's no problem because we're by a lake .

I planned it that way .

I'll heat up plenty of water here .

You know , there's something about motorcycle travel and motorcycle camping , that a couple of words come to mind .

And the first word is something , a good friend of mine said a long time ago , Tom Myers , he's the president of , to us a and he said that if you're gonna play this game of adventure , motorcycling and really get into it and really do it , you got to learn how to suffer .

And I think what he meant by that is that there's just going to be times where it's uncomfortable and you just have to deal with it .

Whether you get aches and pains in your body from writing all day or the weather is cold or the weather is hot or you're just in uncomfortable situations .

You know , the comfort factor in writing is not always the same as it is traveling in a protected enclosed vehicle like a car or an R V or something .

Um But I think it adds something special to it .

So I would say it's grueling in that sense .

There can be , you know , at times and , and the other thing that comes to mind , the other word is grubby .

You know , I've been living off the bike for 10 days and I got to admit , you know , I'm probably a little grubby .

I wonder when I walk into a restaurant for lunch , what the other people might think sometimes .

But , you know , you just got to embrace it .

You got to embrace that smoke in your clothes and dirty clothes .

Tomorrow's laundry day .

I'm definitely feeling kind of grubby and you just got to grin and embrace it .

That's part of the experience , you know , living like this , doing a big trip like this part of the experience too is having what you need and trying to create a scene to where you're comfortable .

You know , my girlfriend used to teach kids how to survive in the wilderness back on the east coast for like 10 years .

And she would get these inner city kids that really didn't have a lot of experience in the wilderness and , you know , when things went wrong and they were wet and they were cold and they were hungry , it was miserable and they were not having a good time .

And so she said , you know what , we're not out in the woods to rough it , we're out in the woods to smooth it .

And I think that's a brilliant piece of advice because you are going to rough it .

But if you can find those ways to make your roughing it , experience as smooth as possible , it can be really enjoyable .

So for me having a Hammock , having my little fire box stove , having the right clothing , having a cold beer at the end of the day , a hot meal , all those things are smoothing it .

They make this kind of experience possible and enjoyable so that , you know , I want to continue to do this and I can continue this pace in this project and it's going pretty well so far , I would say , like I said , 13 days into it .

And now I'm in the , in the point where I've turned around from Montana and I'm going to head back south through Wyoming and Colorado and get back down home to Arizona .

But I'm going to take my time .

I'm going to keep filming stuff along the way .

I hope you guys are enjoying these videos so far .

There's really not much of a plan here or a story other than to ride every day and see some cool things and then camp out at night , cook some good meals and take you along on this journey .

That's been about five minutes .

Let's have a look here .

Hm .

Sometimes just add water is the trick .

There's a lot of camp meals that you can purchase that all they require is hot water .

And a lot of people only cook that way .

They bring a jet boil , boil water , pour their water into the bag .

I can't do that all the time .

Sometimes it's fine .

But I need to cook a little more than that .

I need to cook up a steak on the grill or some fish or some vegetables .

Some fresh food and it's a fine line .

I got to admit you can't get two gourmet motorcycle camping .

The hard thing is being able to purchase just enough food for yourself .

It's hard to buy single serving fresh food unless you can hit a little bulk food store or a co-op or something like that where you can purchase like one piece of meat and just a few little vegetables and things like that .

So , in those cases , when you can't do that , we'll do some Indian food .

Mm .

Mm .

Wow .

Watch out if you ever get this stuff , this Indian Vindaloo curry .

This is some serious spice here .

I probably could have used a little bit of rice .

Hm .

So tomorrow we'll head south through big timber and then we'll get on to the bare tooth pass and then it's into Wyoming .

Well , guys , I'm almost done with my two beers here .

So going to crawl into my Hammock pretty soon .

I hope you guys are getting something out of this and encourage you to keep watching .

There's going to be lots more to come .

I still have 20 days left almost three weeks to get from Montana back down to my home in Southern Arizona .

So stick around .

There's more to come .