Motocamping Solo at Trout Creek Campground: Motorcycle Firewood, Campfire Steak Cooking, River Views

Hello everyone, welcome back to the dork side. Today I'm going moto camping and I'm taking you with me. I'm in the process of loading up the Versys to go out on a moto camping trip and I've had a few questions about how I load it up and where I put everything and how I make these awkwardly shaped side cases work, so I thought maybe I would share this part of the process with you this time. If you're interested in more in-depth about the gear that I take camping, there's a whole video on that which I'll try to remember to link here. So as you can probably see the way the case is set out is it kind of creates these two distinct packing areas. Try to put big pieces in first and then put little stuff in around it and the soft things to try to accommodate the curves in this case. So for instance this has clothes and an extra blanket so it goes really well right here in this bottom piece. Totally, oh yeah, not very space efficient. Totally fits well. Best to put the blade facing in so you don't catch up with your hand when you're unloading. I think that'll fit okay. Should be good. I just have something squishy in there because it'll conform to the shape a little bit. I don't mind if I smash the cloth bag. This fits too well right in there. At the same time we don't want it bouncing around or anything weird, right? All this stuff. Oh yeah, throw it. All right, that's the side cases. Before I forget, I am taking the Giant Loop Diablo Pro tank bag and inside is all my camera gear. Everything else goes in this bag. This is my Ozark Trail dry bag. Tent, sleeping bag. This grill kind of goes on the top and just sort of compresses everything down. Throw this on the back of the bike. We got a spot, spot two, one of my favorites. We're good for the night. The river is right over there. There'll be a tour in a minute, but here's the plan. I'm going to set the tent up here so I can throw the gear in it and then we're going to take the bike and go get some wood, hopefully. So I'm just going to leave my riding pants on because changing out of them and then changing back to ride back down the mountain doesn't make sense. So hopefully they're not too uncomfortable as I set this tent up. I may not even put the fly on. It's not supposed to get, it's not supposed to rain or be super cold tonight. It'd be nice to be able to see some stars, maybe. Let's see. All right, Now, change, actually get camp set up. That was an interesting ride, but who needs a truck? You've got a Versys, right? Versatile system, up to and including hauling wood. I knew she could do it. Here is a tour of the campsite. So this is where I walked in. See? And then behind me it's a beautiful orange Versys, of course. Some fallen logs over here. Here's the bike. Tent is over there. This is a giant stump. Table, it's very messy. I just sort of unloaded everything there. Nice thing about camping by yourself is you can really spread out. There's my Trekology chair. It's the firewood. I managed to fall on the Versys. There's a clothes line. Think about putting my hammock there. Random water spigot, email the camp. The real highlight though is down here. There's a trail, and this trail leads to the river. Here's the river. So it's nice. You get some highway noise because this campsite's really close to the highway, but the river pretty much drowns it out. And I love this site because it has kind of its own private little beach area. Somebody just chilling up there. Such a cool spot. It's just a great spot. Well, we might come hang out down here later, but for now, back to camping. It's much cooler down there. So there's no cell phone service up here, but I have my inReach, so I'm just gonna let my wife know what side I'm at. Like I said, no cell phone, but this sends like text messages via satellite. So I'm just gonna send them. The only thing that sucks is you have to use a directional pad to like type in individual letters, so I usually keep my messages short. You can connect it to your phone via app. I just keep forgetting to put the app on my new phone, so that's a thing. What's funny about this site is that we actually have it reserved on an upcoming weekend, so she knows right where I am. The cool thing about this place is they have an old-timey hand pump for water. We're gonna go try to use the hand pump by ourselves, which is always an interesting challenge because somebody's got to hold the thing. So you've got to kind of set it where you think it should be and then pump it and hope something goes in. So we'll see how that works. It should be fun. Relatively successful. It's like right in the middle of someone's campsite, so that's not awesome. Didn't seem like they were there though, so that's good. I'm gonna cut through here and be right back at our camp. Right by the bathroom. Convenient. See why this one's so good. You're so far back away from the others. There's much secluded area alone. I made all things considered. Not bad. Water's a little cloudy, but it'll have to do. All right, I found a bunch of twigs. Some real dry twigs and stuff to use for tinder. So I don't think I'm gonna need a ton of kindling, but I am just gonna chop this up. So because I have a lot of small stuff and I have regular sized stuff, but I don't have a lot of medium-sized stuff, so it might be nice to have something to put on after the twigs. I'm just gonna make a couple pieces out of this, theoretically. It's pretty hard wood though, we'll see. This is good wood that I bought from a sketchy guy living in a trailer in the woods. Thanks guy. I'm guessing he doesn't watch YouTube, so I'm not super worried about him finding this. That ought to do it. All right, well I'm not really hungry. Not yet. It's too warm for a fire, just for the hell of it. So I'm gonna put the hammock up and just rest and chill out for a bit, I think. Should be fun. I've used these two trees for a hammock before, so theoretically, no problems. So in my last camping video, the L.C. Falls trip, a couple people mentioned that I talked about the fatwood sticks in the gear video, but I didn't actually use them. And I usually just keep them in my bag as a backup in case I need, I can't get a fire going and I need something that's a little bit better. Because these, this is resin impregnated pine wood, I'm pretty sure, and it's naturally occurring and they just sell it as this fire starter stuff, so it's really neat. But I could just light this and it would go up no problem. I wouldn't need anything else to start a fire, but I with a lighter. But I was thinking, since I'm camping, I might challenge myself a little bit. I have this this fire steel that I keep, but I've never actually made a fire with it, so works good. So I figure, I've got the fatwood, I'll be able to make some shavings with the fatwood and see if I can get a fire going that way. So I got my trusty Mora Bushcraft black, my trusty Walmart plate that I'm just going to use to catch the shavings. Don't worry, I'll rinse it off before I eat. I'm gonna try to make some shavings out of this stick. Make a good pile and we'll try to light them with this fire steel. Thin is better, I've been told. One of these. This is how I like to make fires, with just regular wood, but I usually use a lighter. That's my wife. I don't bring paper anymore. She gets annoyed. I watch a lot of Joe Robinette, who, if you haven't watched him, is a fantastic YouTuber. Basically the king of bushcraft, as far as I'm concerned. And I try a lot of Joe Robinette things when I'm out camping. My wife's always like, are you doing Joe things right now? And I'm doing something that's slower or in a more difficult manner than I need to when working with her. Because I want to learn to do it. This plate is not a good idea. It's getting in my way. I want to learn to do it in case I have to, right? I don't know. I hope there's enough curls here from this one to make this work. I think there might be. So we're going to give it a try. So I've got this relatively flat piece and I'm going to use it as a base so that I'm not chasing curls down into the ashes at the bottom. So I'm going to take my curls, put them all together right here. Got a little feather stick here. Hold it all together. Do more curls here. Real good fine stuff. Okay. Now I also have handy, I realize you can't see my face, but I wanted to see the fire. I also have handy is a bundle of twigs to go on as soon as this is going up. And then a few larger sticks, bigger pieces of split kindling to go on. If, if, and when I get this going, I want to have all that handy. Cause you don't have time to run and grab it. Once the fire starts at my fire steel, I'm going to put it right into like a ride in the curls. I'm going to try to get a spark to light them. Look at that. Look at that. Look at that. Look at that. It's going on that fat. What is magic? Look at it go. All right. Twigs on. Oh yeah. More twigs on. Fatwood is magic. It's like cheating. Next time I'll try it without the fatwood. I didn't put my other piece of fatwood on. There you go. Just for a good measure. Oh yeah. You hear that stuff sizzling. It's like gasoline. Huh? You want to burn? That's fine. Yeah. That moss is helping too. Moss is helping. Probably too close to the camera. I'm hot. Everything went better than expected. That was fun. There you go. Can be done with fire steel. Fatwood stick helps, but like I said, next time we'll try without, with regular curls, just to burn good and hot quickly so that I can get some coals and cook on them. Again, I normally wouldn't throw this much on at once cause I'm paranoid about smothering it, but this was doing pretty good with that fatwood underneath and everything's really dry. So it's good. Hopefully that's enough for coals to cook over. I need to get my steak ready. I'm going to rinse my knife and my plate in the river. Let's make sure there's no pine resin in here. Okay. Fire's going really good. So I'm going to take the steak out and season it. So it's ready to go on when the coals are ready. Got the classic Montreal steak. I think I buy a new thing of this every time I go camping because I forget. We either bring it or where I put it. We use a lot of it at the house. Angus top sirloin steak. I got it at Walmart because it was closer and I needed super glue and they had it there. Get it ready for eating, or for cooking first, I assume. Real good. Montreal, it's about the right size for a steak for me. Probably should have cut that fat off. I think I can get that outside strip off. Let's look. Sometimes a sirloin can be a little fatty and this stuff drips into the fire and then you've got flame and that singes your steak and that is never good. Oh my God, he on X Games mode. Looks good. Let these coals get burned down and then put it on the fire. Looks like we got a decent bed of coals with minimal flame. So I'm going to cook these steaks. It's pretty warm. Move this flaming piece just a little bit farther back, but I'm going to try to cook over here anyway. Man, this grill is just the right size. Look at that. Looks so good. How about a little steak? That's going to be good. It's going to be good stuff. Smoking it and cooking it. This is about ready to flip. It's been about five minutes. It's a little singy on the back side. Oh ----, almost lost the whole thing. Yeah, pretty singy. It's going to be good though. About five more minutes. I bet this thing is done. Hot, hot, hot. That is hot. Hot coals. This is about done. In fact, almost overdone. It's cooking so hot. Let's get it off the fire. I'm ready to eat. Thank you. I'm going to get this grate off the fire too, so it can cool off. It's hot. It's very hot. This will surprise you, but it's very hot. You will want an actual fire on the bed. There she goes. It's very windy right here, so the wind is just whipping these coals up really, really fast, so it's easy to get the fire going. Almost too easy. Steak time. That went pretty well. I'm honestly afraid it's overcooked because those coals were way hotter than I thought they were. Yes, I did sneak in another diet soda, just like last time. I just stick it in. I've got this cooler bag thing that's collapsible and soft, so I put a couple ice packs in the bottom. These things are not great. They did a good job though. A couple sodas and a steak, and it stayed cool until we got up here. This is moderately cold. Slightly colder than room temperature. Anyway, steak time. Hopefully, it's not overdone, but it's definitely singed, but not from flame. I'm overcooking. Look how juicy it is. Can you see that? So much juices. Yeah, it's totally cooked. Look at that. Well, it's well done. It's a little pink. Oh, it's tender though. It's good. It's going to bring broths this time. In fact, I had some in the fridge ready to go, and I decided against it for two reasons. One, I didn't want to have to bring ketchup or something. I don't like broths just by themselves. And two, I don't know. I want to cook steak. I just like steak when I'm camping, and it seems more interesting for a video to cook a steak on the fire. I don't know. Would you guys be interested in cooking broths? Should we get some variety in the food that we eat? Why do I keep saying we? I'm the only one here. How about you and me? Because it feels like you're with me. Well, it's not as good as Costco tried to, but it's pretty good. Cooked on a fire helps. So, good trip so far. Got the spot I was hoping to get, although I'm a little disappointed I didn't ride all the way around because I would have checked out 24 because I've never camped in it. It's always taken. I've been here plenty of times, and this is a great spot for a lot of reasons, but I was prioritizing distance from my neighbors and them not being able to see me talking to myself. I'm not quite to the loud and proud look at me. I'm clearly insane. Video making, yeah, it'll come, I'm sure. So, I got the spot we wanted. Got the wood thing figured out. It wasn't easy. Definitely a little bit of an adventure, but we managed to get it here. I'm still saying we. I managed to get it here. I used the cargo net over the top, and then I strapped a couple pieces to the side cases because I just didn't have enough room. Got the hammock set up. Checked out the river. Got a fire going. Managed to make a fire for the first time with fire steel. Kudos to me. I'm impressed with myself. Using the fat, we're just cheating, but whatever. It's got to start somewhere. Versus did really well with all the wood on it. Let me sharpen this knife. I always forget to bring my puck camping. It's like the most fun thing to do camping, to sharpen stuff, to get my hatchet too. After dinner, it's bourbon and flammable dried plant leaves time. I'm cautious about saying the name of this object because I had a video get demonetized because I said the name of this object in the first one minute of the video. I cut it out and it was the second version was monetized, so I'm less concerned about the ad revenue. It's not a lot, but supposedly YouTube stops recommending the videos if you get demonetized and I do want people to watch things, so we're not going to say the name of that thing. My daughter suggested I call it Mr. Puff Puff, so we might call it Mr. Puff Puff. So I'm gonna have a Mr. Puff Puff later and drink some bourbon. Advocating tobacco use is against the TOS, but drinking apparently isn't. A lot of cars coming through right now. Anyway, I'm gonna eat my steak. See you guys in a bit for bourbon and Mr. Puff Puff. The time has come for me to enjoy some bourbon and a Mr. Puff Puff. Remember, I have to call it Mr. Puff Puff because I can't call this object by its actual name. The car like peeling out and taking off up there. Weird. Anyway, it's time for Mr. Puff Puff and Mr. Beam and a relaxing evening, so let's start off with Mr. Puff Puff. I ended up with Jim Beam because I forgot to bring in a buffalo tray, so this is what I have at home and this is what they had at the liquor store, so I'm going to drink this with a little water. I'm going to mix it with the delicious water from the, the delicious yellow tinged water from the manual pump that you saw earlier. I'm going to do that first. I'm actually going to make my drink first. Mr. Beam, it's been a while. A little bourbon. It's a good start. Just a skosh more. A splash of water to unlock the flavor. Hopefully the bourbon kills whatever's still alive in this water. Now, Mr. Puff Puff. This is a Victor Sinclair Imperial 55 that I got in a sampler. I really like these actually. They're really good. Just to be clear, I am in no way condoning, endorsing, or encouraging anyone else to partake in the, the amazing goodness that is Mr. Puff Puff. I merely enjoy it while I'm camping and no endorsement is implied, so especially if you're a young underage person, no Mr. Puff Puff's for you, okay? Even though that sounds like a really cool cartoon character. Not encouraging the use of this product. Just enjoying it myself. So take that, demonetization gods. I don't know how it could have been more clear. These are a lot better than the crappy leftover stuff I had last time. Mr. Puff Puff, you complete me. There's a 50-50 chance you can't even hear me because the river is so loud, but I'm gonna enjoy. This is my favorite thing about camping. Sitting around the campfire with Mr. Puff Puff. Just chilling after dinner. What do you enjoy about camping? What's your favorite part? Tell me so I can try it. Maybe you'll become my favorite part. All right, well I decided to come down to the river for a little bit and just enjoy my cigar and a little bit of bourbon down here by the water because it's beautiful and peaceful and relaxing and sunset. You can see that. It's pretty gorgeous over there. That was fun. It's gorgeous down there. So I'm curious. Do you guys like these camping videos? I really think I really enjoy making them. If you guys like them, that would encourage me to go camping more to make more videos. I actually really enjoy fall camping. Summer camping is probably my least favorite because it's hot. I don't like it when it's super hot. In the fall, I don't mind a little threat of rain because it's cooler and nowhere else is better. So what do you think? What should I do more of in these videos? Like do you want more of the nuts and bolts stuff? Do you want more tent setup? All that stuff? Or do you just want kind of an overview of the experience, the highlights? I'm not sure. Not much to show you. I wonder about the length. Because I watch a lot of bushcraft and camping YouTubers. Joe Robinette is my favorite. Check him out if you haven't. His videos are all an hour long. So he'll go out and do an overnighter. And so I thought I'd experiment with a little bit longer videos rather than breaking these up. What do you think? Is the length good? These videos are 20 to 30 minutes. Is that a good length? It's like watching an episode of a TV show. What do you think? Or is it too much? Should I cut it down? More highlights. Less whole experience. Less talking to the camera and more camping. Tell me in the comments. I'm curious. If I am going to make them, then I'd like to include the things that you guys want to see. And I hope you can hear me okay. I'm trying to project, but the river is loud. But I appreciate you coming along with me. It's fun. It's fun to know that you're going to watch this. It gives me a reason to try things like making a fire with fire steel. It gives me a reason to go camping in the first place. So thanks for watching. I appreciate you letting me know that through the viewers. All right, y'all. It's about 9 p.m. I'm gonna finish this bourbon, I think. Let the fire die down a little bit. And head to bed. I think you can see me because I'm using my headlamp as a light. So thank you for hanging out. Like I said, I'm gonna finish this, drink a little water, go pee a couple times, and head to bed in the next hour or so. So I will see you in the morning. Good morning. So it's 7.15. It's not that okay. I just can't get comfortable on that sleeping pad. I don't know. I have to roll over. The way I wake up every two hours. I think it's coffee time. This stuff? Best camping coffee. It actually tastes like coffee. Easy enough to make. I love that smell of propane, butane, whatever this is. This will be the fuel I will need to pack up the camp. A little boost of caffeine in the morning. I feel relatively quiet in the campground. Aside from a guy talking to himself while he's making coffee. Seems to be a lot of traffic on the highway this morning. Coffee by the river. That could be good. Just about at the end of our adventure here. Nothing left to do but pack up camp, put it all back on the bike, and head home. So let's do that. All right everyone. Bike's all packed. The only thing left to do is put my gear on and head home. So I just want to say thank you for coming on this adventure with me. If you enjoyed the video, please consider subscribing. Don't forget to hit that like button if you had a good time. I appreciate you coming along with me. Thank you for watching until the end. And as always, please do not forget to be excellent to each other. Sorry about the crooked video. I didn't realize the camera tilted while I was loading all that up. But it's probably still fun. Anyway, nothing. Excellent!