Montana - Remote Forest Camping.

I am way the heck out in the backcountry in Montana tonight. 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 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 going to build a fire. I really like having this little GSI 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 cook on or to eat on or to prepare food. It's just one of those little luxuries on on a trip like this and I'm riding a big 1200 GS so I feel like I can carry a little bit more or at least as much as any other adventure bike but you still have to be reasonable in what you bring so I would consider this sort of one of my luxuries on this trip 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 firebox 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 just like that. Voila. Firebox. 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 firebox 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 pot setup I'm using it's called a billy can. A billy bush can or something like that. It's really functional. It's really cool. It 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 inside of it and then my aero press. That's my coffee setup 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 MSR stove and my coffee. We're going to get some water boiling here. Get that on the firebox 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. 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, boil sealed pouch in water for five minutes. Well there you go. I think I'm going to 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 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 riding 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 riding is not always the same as it is traveling in a protected enclosed vehicle like a car or an RV or something but I think it adds something special to it so I would say it's grueling in that sense 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 gotta 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 gotta embrace it you gotta embrace that smoke in your clothes and dirty clothes tomorrow's laundry day I'm definitely feeling kind of grubby and you just gotta 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 firebox 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 this pace and 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 gonna head back south through Wyoming and Colorado and get back down home to Arizona but I'm gonna take my time I'm gonna 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 say that's been about five minutes let's have a look here 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 gotta admit you can't get too 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 you can't do that we'll do some Indian food 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 so tomorrow we'll head south through Big Timber and then we'll get on to the Beartooth Pass and then it's into Wyoming well guys I'm almost done with my two beers here so I'm 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