First Motorcycle Camping Trip on My Yamaha Tenere 700

Finally, it's time to go spring moto camping. So basically, I'm violating the step one, step two progression. That is my leftover firewood from when I was up here last March, after it ate right through his hard case. This is not a sleeping bag at all. No, not quite. Suddenly, everything dries up and catches on fire. The number of twigs is massive, okay? Oh, f**k. Mmmmm. Do I die if I eat raw sausage? This is the sad current state of my fire. There we go. Put on a ridiculous orange poncho and just be toasty. Bald or round, I forget. Hello, friends. Welcome back to the dork side. I'm the Dork in the Road, and finally, it's time to go spring moto camping. I'm the Dork in the Road, and I want to be your internet riding buddy, so please consider subscribing. I'm getting ready to jump on the bike and head out to go moto camping at our secret spot with Duck Fan. It has been a very, very crappy spring. You guys may remember I went camping in February, and then I did a little cabin camp a couple weeks after that, and I have not been camping off the bike since. And it's not because I didn't want to. I had all these plans of trying to soak up the spring, but a few crazy things happened. One, we literally had the rainiest April in history. Like, we set a record. It was so rainy here. It rained every single day in April. And then at the end of April, I got COVID, so I was sick and, you know, couldn't leave the house for 10 days. And then right after that was my surgery, my little snip-snip procedure that some of you know about. And throughout all of that time, the weather was still crappy. So we finally got some decent weather. And the first good weekend that we had, I was like, we got to go camping. So Duck Fan and I are going to go camping. So the Tenere is loaded up. Before you go reading too much into, wow, why are you taking the Tenere? Do you like it better? The jury is still out, guys. I don't have enough miles on either one of these to decide which one I like better. But the Tenere has the new tires on it already. The Norden doesn't. And the Tenere's got the pannier racks already. The Norden doesn't. They haven't come yet. So that's why I'm taking the Tenere. That's the only reason. Don't read too much into it. I love how excited and passionate you guys are about this whole Versus thing. But I have not made any secret decisions yet. No, no hidden agenda here. But anyway, Duck Fan's going to be here in a little bit. So I'm going to get geared up and we'll ride out there and I'll catch up with you along the way. And we're off. Not bad. Half a pile of firewood already if it'll burn. Gotta get the fire hot enough. Okay, so we're at the campsite. Duck Fan's behind the camera. You're just going to have to trust me. But this is the old tried and true spot up Shotgun Creek. I obviously have not dealt with my gear yet. So, you know, neither has Duck Fan. Basically, we got our chairs out and started drinking. It's early enough that we have time to get set up. I need to film a couple Giant Loop videos. So I'm kind of waiting for the shade to move, which would be nice to set up my tent in the shade too. So basically, I'm violating the step one, step two progression. But I literally have enough time to drink everything I have, get sober, set up camp, and still be fine. So we'll be fine. But this is the spot, the most secluded spot. And let me show you how secluded it is and how unused it is. That is my leftover firewood from when I was up here last March. So it is May. So it's been 14 months since I put that firewood there. Now, Duck Fan and I have been back here, both of us. Since then, but there was a fire ban all summer. So, but nobody has camped here when they were able to have a campfire except for us since then. And that's how I know this spot just doesn't get used. And that's why I like it so much. I'll catch up with you when we get set up maybe, but just wanted you to know that we made it and we're excited to be moto camping. Any words of wisdom or thoughts of funness, Duck Fan? I think next time we need to bring a weed whacker. You put it on your bike and I'll whack your weeds. That's what she said. You know, like the Minox from Star Wars, they like leech on the outside of a ship and suck its power out. I think the Pacific Northwest Manta Rays are similar, but it's only with soft luggage. Because if you look, this one has really nested itself. Look, it's securely latched on here to my giant lutella muck bag. And I think it's trying to feed on all my stuff inside. There's no food in there. So it's pretty weird. But these Pacific Northwest Manta Rays, man, they are ubiquitous. And look at this one. It fed and got so full, it just collapsed on the ground. It's like when a snake eats a poisonous lizard and rolls over until it can digest it or die. That's what's happening right now with this Manta Ray. Fell right off Duck Fan's bike after it ate right through his hard case. Well, there was a garter snake, and Duck Fan was kicking it nicely just to see if it was alive. But I don't know where it went. Damn, I want to get him on camera for you. Oh, well, no mutual of Omaha's Wild America this time. So it's been a little while. I had a couple beverages. We just filmed two videos for Giant Loop. So check those out about how to pack the MotorTrek panniers and the setup on the Tenere. But I'm actually going to set my tent up now. Duck Fan's got his tent up at least. He's not quite all the way set up, but we're working towards it. That's my gear on the ground. His bike's over there. It's time for me to get my bed ready and then probably time for us to process firewood. So it's time for the work to begin. Yay, let's get rolling. A little bit different sleeping bag setup this time. This is not a sleeping bag at all. It is a quilt. It is an Enlightened Equipment quilt. First of all, important thing is look how small it packs down. This is a 20 degree quilt. So it's supposed to be pretty good for most super cold temperatures. Super lightweight and it's interesting. This one actually has a drawstring bottom. So you can unzip this all the way and it turns into just a blanket, but the thing sits on top of your sleeping pad. It doesn't go around it or underneath it. It just sits on top and you actually attach it with some straps, which I will show you. Here's one of them. This is the top strap, but I got to put the lower strap on first. This is an extra wide one because my sleeping pad is enormous. I haven't done this in a tent yet, so bear with me. Should have put it on from the other end. That's where it goes. This is the middle strap. This one buckle both pieces up. So it just clips on. I'm just going to twist it. I don't care. So that goes there and this one will clip on here and it's kind of underneath you. So you're laying on top of the quilt sort of. That's how it keeps the warmth in. Okay, and there's another set of clips. This has got to go under the bag. That so it's up here. So it's kind of sleeping baggy and then I just unclip this one and when I come to bed, I'm just going to lay in here on top of it and I'll clip this back and it'll keep me nice and warm but I slept in one of these at the get on ADV fest and I was very warm. So I anticipate being very warm again tonight and it takes up so much less space than my big big sleeping bags that I'm pretty excited about it. So I'll let you know how it is, but that's my sleeping setup for tonight. You can roll around inside of it just like with the big Agnes bags because you're not really laying on top of it. It's on top of you bed set up now. It's time to find some firewood. So while we're camping we are testing out some new gear. We're always testing out new gear. Not just the quilt which I showed you which you can get a motocamp nerd site by the way. I'll link it for you. But also I got these flashlights from Olight. So this is the Olight Warrior Mini 2. This thing goes up to like 1200 lumens in turbo mode and it's rechargeable. Nice little flashlight pretty excited to try this out later. This is the Olight Parin Mini. So this turns into a headlamp. It's got this convenient little velcro patch which can go in a stocking cap or really anything that's fuzzy. Nothing I'm wearing is fuzzy except. Yeah, not quite. This is what I'll be rocking tonight. This thing goes up to a ridiculously high number of lumens too. It's adjustable. It's oh my God so bright. So I'll be rocking these later in the dark, but I want to show them to you in the light first or later which will give them a real test, but I have a 10% discount code for these. Gets dork 10 and you save 10%. There's a link in the description if you want to check these out. Pretty sweet little lights. I played with them at home and I think they're going to be great. I love the rechargeable. No bringing extra batteries or swapping batteries. Just charge them up before you go and you're good to go. But thanks to Olight for sending me those to try out. Hopefully I'm optimistic. I know a few people that have really liked them. So I'm stoked for it to get dark. So we just gathered a bunch of firewood and it reminded me of a pretty common theme in the comments of my videos. So I want to talk a little bit about firewood gathering. So technically on federal land on BLM land, which is where we are or Forest Service land and many state forests at least out West. You're allowed to gather firewood for a campfire without a permit just for camping. If you want to like get enough firewood to heat your home for the winter, you got to buy a permit. Now, ideally what you want to look for is dead down and dry, right? You want to find a dead log on the ground. You don't want to be cutting down trees or cutting limbs off trees, whatever. And we always start with that. Always try to find that. The problem is for us, we live in the Pacific Northwest. The ground is always wet. It's literally a rainforest. Everything is always wet except the middle of summer when suddenly everything dries up and catches on fire. And so any log that's been on the ground for any length of time is not going to burn. So the ideal what you want to find is a tree or limb that has died but has fallen and is leaning up against something else, right? That's ideal because it's dead. It's down. It's dry. It's just not on the ground. I always look for that stuff first something, you know, like Widowmakers and snags things like that. But occasionally we have to go and find dead standing trees and you have to be careful because especially in the winter and the fall when the leaves are gone or even the spring before they've come out like a deciduous tree can look dead when it isn't. You can usually tell when you start pushing on it, right, by how springy it is. If it's really, really, really elastic, that tree is not dead. If you give it a push and it snaps off, it was dead. Now, I don't recommend doing that all the time. It's not a first resort obviously, but at the same time it's usually trees that have been shaded out by the taller trees and died. And so they're just kind of taking up space in underneath the canopy. Obviously your priority stuff that's on the ground that's dry. If you can find it and only use that, do it. But we will occasionally take a dead standing tree, chop it up and use it for firewood. And I don't think as long as you're not doing it in campgrounds or places where people camp a lot that there's anything wrong with taking like literally one or two medium-sized trees will get us through the whole night. So not even medium. They're small trees. They're just not tiny, tiny saplings, you know what I mean? Not leaving no trace, I guess, but at the same time it doesn't hurt the forest to take trees that are already dead. It doesn't hurt the forest any more than taking trees off the ground because the ones on the ground become food for fungus and habitat for animals. And when you take that stuff, it harms the forest to a small degree and you could say the same for taking down a dead standing tree, theoretically. But eventually the dead standing tree will just fall and become a tree on the ground. We're just accelerating the process. To each their own and it's different everywhere. But if I live somewhere where it was, if I lived even on the other side of the mountain, if I lived in Central Oregon, I'd never have to cut down a tree because there's always dry wood on the ground. We just don't have it here in the valley. We just don't. Anyway, I'm going to make a fire here in a minute or one of us is, I don't know. I shouldn't assume it's me and then we'll cook dinner. Okay, it's campfire time and we're going to do some Bigfoot bushcraft fire starters, of course. Link in the description. Save 15% with promo code dork in the road. These things work great. And I'm going to use my fire steel and people are always commenting like why don't you just use a lighter? It's so much easier because that's not as fun. It makes me feel like a big bushcraft man. That's why I do it. Okay, so deal with it. Ta-da! So many twigs to get this going too. So many twigs today. You don't even know. The number of twigs is massive. Okay, look at this enormous amount of twigs. We have even got fat wood to go in the twigs. That's right. This is not an approved fire method. This is not the teepee. So we're going to cook some brats on the fire. So we got to get this going and then let it burn down. So we have some coals. Don't want a lot of flame for that. Bro, what are you doing? Yeah, the area around the pit isn't clear, but this is all really wet. I'm not super worried about it at this point in the year. I would worry more later on. We've been fighting the fire for a while, but I think we're going to have a decent enough coal bed here to cook on. So I'm going to kind of knock this apart and let it burn down a little while I put the grill on top to heat up. Hopefully we don't get too much flame while we're cooking. This is just my Red Camp. This is an Amazon grill. It's worked great for me so far. I've been using it a couple years now. I think it's going to work. Obviously one side is going to be hotter than the other. These are chili and smoked paprika sausages and they have zero carbs. So I've never had this brand before. It's kind of weird. Well, sure. Take the hot side. Guy that doesn't even need his to be cooked. Oh, no, you didn't. Oh, no, you didn't. You're smart. I'm using a dirty, gross stick. It's not the approved method for cooking. These are going to be interesting. I have to rotate them too, because obviously one side is going to get cooked more than the other. Oh. I knew that was going to happen too. We'll cook it clean. Fortunately, I got that on camera. Singeing it. Stupid flames. Get all over under. Bro, I'm so glad I just left the camera running. Well, one of the joys of camping on the fire is it's never perfect. And we are struggling with some flames. I thought I had a coal bed and everything started jumping up. So we're going to have some Cajun style sausages tonight. It's all good. Who hasn't singed their sausage? Okay, so I've dropped two of these in the fire. So but I don't know which two so eating them will be an adventure, but it's probably time to take them off. They seem pretty solid. Let's hope it's edible. This was an adventure. The whole fire tonight has been an adventure. I'm being honest. Okay, I brought some ketchup if I need it, but let's see how they are. This one looks the least ridiculously mangled. I don't think it's cooked all the way. I like the flavor. That one looks a lot more cooked. Do I die if I eat raw sausage? No, just salmonella. Not a big deal. I've had worse camping dinners now. If I'm squatting in the woods in an hour, we'll know why. Dinner is consumed. Bed is set up. Fire's going. I am concerned we don't have enough wood. So maybe an early night or us staring at each other across headlamps or something for a while, but because all the wood we have is pretty wet. It's springtime in PNW. What are you going to do? It's Mr. Puff Puff time is the point I was trying to get to and I really meandered there. So here we go. And of course, no Mr. Puff Puff is complete without a beverage. And so we're enjoying using our Motocamp nerd flask 9 ounces. Remember you guys those of you that are new to the channel. We don't do that 8 ounce flask BS like those little baby flasks. This is 9 ounces and sturdy. You can run this over with your motorcycle. You should try that later. Let me empty it first and then we'll try that because what could go wrong? This is a bullet, bullet bourbon in here. One of my favorites. Delicious bourbon. Camping. Don't forget to like the video if you like camping videos. If you want me to make more, hit the like button. And if you don't want me to make more, hit the like button because then I know you like hating them. Seems easy to me. You all know that the best camping gear is stuff that has multiple purposes, right? Because you have limited space to carry it. Well, this is actually duck fans, but he bought one because I bought one. This is the Giga Pump. It's not a compressor. It just is a fan basically that fills up your air mattress, but it also works wonders when you're trying to get your fire going. We are fighting this wet wood. Everything here is wet. The fire keeps kind of dying down. I just want to show you the magic that is the Giga Pump. This is the sad current state of my fire, but there's a little hole down here, and if I just put the Giga Pump down there and hit the button, see what—look what happens. Ignore—oh, it's sucking grass in. Flame on! It's literally better than gasoline. No kidding. Yep, I even got that piece on top burning. I thought you guys might appreciate that. Hold on, one more demo? Okay. It's a blaster! Giga Pump, link in description. I just like it because I'm too lazy to blow up my air mattress, but damn, it is sure nice when you need it for other stuff. All right, it's almost dark. It's twilight-y, but it's pretty dark as far as the camera can tell. I want to show you how bright this headlight is. So this is the Olight headlamp. This is the—it's the Parin or the Perun. I don't know. I'm going to go with Parin, but it's got a bunch of modes. So let me show you. This is regular mode. I'm just going to point—it's going to look like blackness, and then I'll turn it on. So this is just high. It lights it up out there. Like, it's very bright, but check this out. If you double-click it, you get turbo mode. It's crazy bright. It's like daytime. Okay, and that's pretty good. That's the headlamp, but wait till you see the flashlight because the flashlight literally does like 1,200 lumens. Okay, this is just high. Okay, look at turbo. It's like 1,200 lumens, I think. My other headlamp is 500, and I thought it was pretty cool. This is insanely bright. Like, no joke. And I can't even get it on camera without it looking like sh—. It's super bright. Like, it's hurting my eyes to film this right now. This is the Perun headlamp, and the other one is the Warrior flashlight because the link in the description will take you to their website, but that's an affiliate link, so please click it when you go in. And then use that code to save 10% if you decide to get something, but pretty impressed with these lights. So this headlamp will definitely replace my current headlamp that I've been using. It's got a cool magnetic charger and all that. It's a pretty neat setup. I'm just hanging out with the D fan, looking at some fire. It's pretty exciting. Camping. It's about 1045, so it's late enough. I'm still very impressed that the fire managed to stay alive all night. Big shout-out and thank you to Duck Fan's inflator, which did all the work, but that was great. Campfire evening, chilling, hanging out, talking, laughing, enjoying a beverage or two, and Mr. Puff Puff, but the time has come to go to sleep. So I'll catch up with you in the morning. Don't forget to like the video if you like these camping adventures. That really helps, but helps me sleep better at night and also makes the videos more visible, which is good. Anyway, good night. Catch up with you in the morning. Good morning. Survived the night. It's like not like cold, cold. It's like chilly to where you could sit out here in your jacket and be cold or put on a ridiculous orange poncho and just be toasty. I went with option B because that's how I roll. And also I have the damn thing. I didn't need it last night. The quilt kept me plenty warm. So if I don't wear this this morning, I brought it for nothing, right? So this thing's handy. It's very warm. I'm pretty stoked they sent it to me and it's great for an extra blanket, but also the added functionality of it converting into this for sitting around in the morning, especially when you barely kept a fire going all night last night and there's no way in hell I'm going to get this wet wood going again this morning. Duck fans making coffee. I'm enjoying some high side coffee as well. It's just steeping. That's coffee in a teabag. Biodegradable too. Not that I don't take it with me, but I guess if I did accidentally fling it into the woods, I wouldn't have to feel guilty or whatever. Don't do that. It's a joke. Leave no trace. Pleasant night. I mean as pleasant as it gets, you know, you wake up. My shoulder goes numb. It doesn't matter how I lay on an air mattress, but that Q-Core insulated deluxe is very comfortable. Although the claim that it's quieter than the other ones is absolute bull**** because we can hear each other rolling around as if we were in the same tent. It may be, it may be marginally quieter, right? But it's not quiet. Don't, don't let them fool you. No, it's not quiet. You can hear it. But that quilt setup, I don't, I still don't understand what, how or why it works so well. Seriously, because it's, you look at it and I'm like, all the heat is going to escape. There's nothing around or underneath you. But if you pull those, the tabs are adjustable that you clip the quilt into. And if you pull them in a couple inches from the side of the pad, you're effectively laying on it and it traps all the heat. And I was warm and it was probably 40 degrees last night. That's a 20 degree quilt. I didn't put this blanket on. I was good. So I'm digging that setup because it's about half the size of my other sleeping bag. It's not even in a compression sack. Like that's just in a stuff sack. If I, I could probably compress it down even more. Probably to like softball size, I bet. Neat little setup. So thanks Motocamp Nerd for sending me that. And I'm linking everything I'm talking about in the description. I hope this doesn't turn into like a commercial. I just, when I get something that works, I want you guys to know so that you can get something that's good and not waste your money on something that isn't. That's my whole thing. I had somebody one time, I got a comment and the guy was like, if you didn't pay for those products, you're nothing but a shill for these companies. And I was just like, Or it's my job to test out and review products so that people who are interested in buying them will know if they're any good before they spend their own money. I don't know. That's kind of how I see it. I guess if it offends you, sorry. Very lucky that I get to test and use all this stuff. Speaking of gear that I'm testing and reviewing, very happy with that headlamp. That was super bright. This is how I know something's like cool and good. If Duckfan gets jealous and wants one, I know it's good. And he already has a really fancy headlamp, but my guess is he might get one of these as a backup. Here's one that looks like Geordi the Forge's visor with like some cyborg implants like Lobot from Empire Strikes Back. It has Bluetooth. And it has Bluetooth and it's auto-dimming like the headlights on my tundra. We're just going to hang out, have some coffee. My tent is very dewy. I don't really have anywhere to be today. It might be nice to wait till the sun comes up and try to dry it off, but every time I do that, it doesn't dry off anyway and I still have to take it out when I get home. So we'll see. Any thoughts or feelings on the evening, Duckfan? I'm really surprised we weren't visited by a bear. Why? Because you left all your food out right next to your chair? Yeah. I hung mine from my handlebar. So I hung my bear bag. They definitely couldn't reach it up there. So the bear would destroy my bike and take my food. Fortunately, I have never seen a bear out here. I've never heard about a bear out here messing with anybody. We're pretty lucky around here. So we get pretty sloppy with our food safety stuff. I know you can't do that in other parts of the country. There's not even raccoons. I've never even seen a coon or a opossum here at this spot. I've seen a cougar about two miles from here and I've heard coyote many times. Anyway, coffee time. That's hot. Quoth Paris Hilton, that's hot. I'm drying my tent or trying to. It's really nice to get everything dry before you leave so I don't have to pull it all out when I get home and hang it up to dry. But for those of you who don't know, I'm sure many of you do, but you don't want to store your tent wet because it'll mildew up really bad in there and it'll smell like crap and have stains and it's bad. So the constant struggle. I'm always having to take my gear home and then just hang it up in the garage. Anyway, I think that's about going to do it for this moto camping adventure. So great to get out finally after a really really long April and first half of May with a lot of things going on for me. So good to get out with Duck Fan. Duck Fan, do you have any words of wisdom? I'm just glad we got out at least once before the whole state catches on fire. I want to give a big shout out and thank you to my channel members and patrons without whom content like this wouldn't be possible. Channel members get early access to videos, they get merchandise discounts, and they get access to the after parties after the live streams every month. Same for patrons. There's a join button for the channel memberships right below the video and there's a link to Patreon in the description and I appreciate all that support. If you don't want to commit to a monthly fee, which I get because you know who knows what this guy's going to do for month to month, but you want to support the channel, you can always use my links to Rocky Mountain, RevZilla, Amazon, or Motocamp Nerd. Those are in the description. Don't forget that if you buy from Motocamp Nerd, you can save 10% with promo code DORKINTHEROAD. Bigfoot Bushcraft, I got a promo code. Giant Lupimoto, bless you. Giant Lupimoto, I've got a promo code. So it's all DORKINTHEROAD everywhere. And check out Enlightened Equipment, those quilts are on Motocamp Nerd's site, which I will link for you. And the Olights, I'll put a link to the Olights as well. There's a promo code there too where you save 10%. I think it's DORK10, but if it isn't, I'll put the right code on the screen. Well, it's been a good trip. I'm excited to ride out of here on the Tenere. Kind of tempted to take the long way out. But for now, and as always, I just want to say thank you very much for watching, and please do not forget to be excellent to each other. I'll take it. Excellent! But we're gonna go up there. It's an actual mountaintop, technically. It's Bald or Round, I forget. The names are so clever, I can't tell them apart. There's a really fun, like a really long hill, like downhill and then uphill on the other side right up here. Looks super sketch, and then you get on it, it's not that bad at all. It doesn't look sketch, it just looks steep. Go right at the top of the hill, catch it. That way. Anyway, this is pretty and peaceful and beautiful. But look at all the garbage in the pond. Like, people just come up here and destroy it. Hate it.