Biking The Wolf Creek Ridgeline - Utah National Forest Bike Tour

I've already gone 40 miles for today and I'm just now turning on the camera. I passed a sign just a moment ago saying that I was at 9,500 feet and I'm still going up. I don't know if I'm going to quite reach 10,000 feet tonight, but I'm up there. I'm up there. It's a beautiful place I'm in right now. It's kind of a logging road and there are signs of logging over here to my left and probably all along this road. But beautiful, beautiful place. I'm really looking forward to camping up here tonight. I think it's going to be amazing. Makes me think of that movie Fern Gully where they're like logging the rainforest. Pretty sad. Today's been exhausting. Part of why I haven't turned the camera on until just now is I've just been going uphill all day long. Look over here. It's a nice little pond. Check it out. This is cool. So when I'm bicycle touring, I'm always looking for water. That's like the main thing that I run out of and that I'm kind of striving to find. So whenever I see something like this, I make note of it in my head because if I have to, I will come back here and actually drink out of this thing. It's totally brown water. But if I had to, I would totally drink out of this in a heartbeat. I try to find like moving water, like streams and rivers and stuff, but still in my head, there's water here that I can drink and survive off of. So really beautiful. Look at the scenery around here. This is what you dream about when you think about bike terrain. Look at the sky reflecting in the water and it kind of looks like it could rain. I hope it doesn't. If it does rain, I want to have my tent up before it does. So the weather right now though is like perfect. It's a little cool and just absolutely perfect. So I decided to stop here at this little pond for three reasons. One, I just need a break. Two, I need some food and I have a peanut butter and banana sandwich in my bag. I have two of them actually. I'm going to eat one now and I'm going to save one for dinner later tonight. And the third reason I wanted to stop is just to show you all the wild flowers that are around here, because sometimes when I'm shooting these Bicycle Touring Pro videos, I'm shooting big, wide landscapes and that's kind of the big, beautiful thing. But other times the details, you know, the micro shots are the really beautiful thing. So let me zoom in on a couple of these flowers here and plants and I'll show you what I'm talking about. This is awesome. This is my kind of place right here. Pond to my right, forest to my left, surrounded by wildflowers. Oh yeah. Okay, so I got my water, got my peanut butter and banana sandwich. This is what I've been waiting for all day long, to find a place like this. You can ride for days, weeks, months and never find a place like this. There's no one out here. This is what it's all about, man. I've been doing this bike touring thing for 21 years, as I've said before. And one of the things I've realized is that now that I've done so much bike touring, I've been to so many places in the world. I've gone through so many different landscapes, you know, jungles and forests and deserts and arctic tundra and all kinds of different things. I have a very good sense now of what I like about bicycle touring and the sorts of environments that I enjoy the most. And which sorts of environments, while they may be aesthetically pleasing or something, or they may have some other interest for me. It is places like this that are just pure nature where there's no one around. It's beautiful. The weather is amazing right now. When you have all of that, that's what I look for when I'm bike touring now. I used to go on my bike tours and I had different goals. You know, I wanted to see big cities or cycle across America or something like that. Whereas now, my goals are more about just getting out in nature, getting away from the big city, getting away from my phone, getting away from the computer, all that kind of stuff. And just getting into a place like this, a place that I really enjoy. If I could see a moose or an elk or something wander out of that forest, that would really just put this over the top. But anyways, just wanted to say, you know, a lot of people go on bike tours and they do it like to impress other people or whatever. And I've probably done that in the past and made that mistake. But now I do bike touring for myself. You know, if I'm not doing it for me, who am I doing it for? It's a little bird over here. Hey, buddy. Probably smells my sandwich. It's just, oh, there you went. Hmm. When I was in high school, I ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich almost every single day at lunch. And then as soon as I graduated from high school, I like never ate a peanut butter and banana sandwich for like 20 years. But now I do occasionally, very rarely eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich. And today is one of those days. Really takes me back. Surprisingly good. I just realized that I have a big grease mark or something on my face. I'm using the camera lens to clear it off. Oh, well, that's what happens when you go bike touring. Well, why didn't you? Why didn't you call? Something in the air, always something in the air, inexplicable, I can feel it in the air. Can you feel me? Look at this. Looks like you're changing. All right. It's 7 p.m. now. I've passed like a dozen perfectly fine camping spots. There is an area back there with a lot of camping spots, but there is a bunch of RVers camp there and I didn't want to camp right next to them. So I'm just cruising along looking for the perfect camping spot. I could literally camp anywhere here. I mean, look at this. It's just endless forest. I love it. I was trying to find like a legitimate like fire pit where somebody had camped before, but I haven't seen one in the last half hour or so. So I'm just going to keep going. If not, I'll just end up camping like in a grassy area, kind of like you see behind me there. All right. So we're at a fork in the road right now, right here by the pond. This road behind me, this one, is the direction that I think I'm going to go tomorrow. But if you look right here, this path goes around this little pond and I think somewhere over there would be a great place to spend the night. So, gosh, it's freaking awesome. I love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Okay. So I'm going to go this way. See what's over there. I could just camp right here. Look at that. There's a fire pit. I'm just going to go around and explore here. Oh, here's another nice little site over here. A little more private. Oh, yeah. This is my spot for tonight, for sure. There's one fire pit right there, right above the pond. Another fire pit right here. Oh, yeah. Oh, look. A tent spot under the trees so that you don't get blasted by the sun in the morning. Look at here. Someone's built a little shelter. Put my bike down. Go in there. Looks pretty fresh. Hey, this is cool. Some kids obviously built this. Got themselves a little bed here. This is awesome. I could sleep in here. Looks like four little beds in here. One, two. There's two more. Another one over here. Three. It's a four-room treehouse. I could sleep under here tonight. That would be cool. All right. I'm going to take my helmet off and explore a little bit. This place is perfect. There's no one here too. All those RVers that I passed earlier are all up together up on the hill over there. I got this whole place to myself. Okay. I'm going to walk away from the pond. Oh, look at this right here. I got a friend, a teddy bear. The first bear I've seen on this trip. His head is all chewed off. That's cool. I'm going to keep him. Put him on my bike. Oh, look at this. Another surprise. It's a big old cow pie. Oh boy. All right. Put him there. Dude, look at this cow pie. It's like, you think I could throw it? I'm going to throw it. I'm picking it up. It's like a Frisbee. You ready? One, two, three. If you don't have a Frisbee, use a cow pie. Remind me later to wash my hands. Good thing I got that pond right here. Oh, this is so nice. Look at this. Yeah. This is the spot. This is great. I don't know if you can see all the mountains in the background, but So it does look as though I am the only person here. I just wanted to make sure before I start talking to myself out loud. So I'm going to go check out the pond now. There was obviously people here. Maybe they were here this weekend. Today's a Monday, so there's generally not a lot of people out camping on Monday night. You know, the one thing I do think about when I'm selecting a campsite is like animals in the area. And obviously like mice and I don't know, gophers and stuff like that can hide in these little rocks like I'm climbing around right now. And they're kind of hard to see. They can be pretty much anywhere. But bigger animals are oftentimes attracted to water. And what we have behind me here are two small ponds. There's one here and there's another one over here. So it is a possibility that, you know, you get deer and bear and bobcat and all kinds of stuff. Um, see this birds over there? Oh, there's a little chipmunk. Speaking of chipmunks, there's one right there on that rock. I don't know if you can see him. I'm zooming in. He's right in the middle. Come on camera focus. He ran away. Look at this guy. He's got no brains. His brains have been chewed out. What should we call him? I think we should call him pants like jeans or anything like that on this trip. I just brought these sweatpants to sleep in basically or to wear around camp and a pair of shorts and that's it. And I have one jersey and two shirts, this and like a down jacket and that's pretty much it. I think it's going to be pretty cold tonight, maybe in the high 40s. Um, so I hope I'm warm enough for dinner tonight. Got my camp stove. I got this leftover peanut butter and banana sandwich, which was from earlier. I didn't finish. I've got a can of lentil soup and I have a whole other peanut butter and banana sandwich. Uh, if I don't eat this tonight, the bananas are going to be super soggy by tomorrow. So I almost have to eat this today. And I'm not even that hungry, honestly. It's weird when I get on these bike trips, I don't eat as much as I do when I'm at home. I think when I'm at home, I eat out of boredom. When I'm out here, I eat because I need the energy. And for whatever reason today, I just, even though like I was climbing uphill all day long, I don't really feel that hungry. Maybe this little bit earlier filled me up anyways. Um, I'm going to cook some soup now and it's going to get dark soon. There's a big cloud covering the sun right now. So it feels like it's going to get dark any second, but I think I have still about 45 minutes to an hour left. So I traded in my old spoon slash fork for a legitimate, like lightweight spoon. And I have a fork in here too. Here it is. I didn't like that other spork thing that I had before. So I got these two separate things tonight. I don't need the fork though. So I enjoy this time of day so much, except for the mosquitoes. Um, I used to enjoy this part of the day more, but lately I honestly think ever since I got cancer, I've had a hard time just being alone. Like I've spent my whole life alone. You know, I've traveled to practically a hundred different countries all around the world alone and never had a problem with it until recently, until I got cancer. It was really, it's just been really hard to go through all that. I think because when you get cancer, you really are going through it alone. You know, you may have friends or family around you and you may go and see your doctors or whatever, but the truth is you're fighting that thing alone. You're ******* alone, man. And you know, when, as soon as you're on your own, here we go. Progresso lentil soup. This one is honestly not my favorite, but All right. So that just about does it. I am Darren Alf from BicycleTourandPro.com. This is my friend Ute, and we just want to say thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, please give us a big like. That's a thumbs up from Ute. He doesn't have a thumb, but he's giving you one right now. Thumbs up from Ute. If you're new to the channel, make sure you subscribe to get more videos in the future. If you know someone that would enjoy this video, please share it with them. And if you are ready to learn how to conduct your own bicycle touring adventures, make sure you visit my website at BikeTourShop.com, where you can pick up a copy of my book, The Bicycle Touring Blueprint, which will teach you everything you need to know in order to conduct a bicycle tour of your own anywhere in the world. On that website, BikeTourShop.com, you can also pick up products like these waterproof bicycle touring bags, and the kickstand that I use on my bike, and a whole bunch of other things. So head on over there, BikeTourShop.com. Once again, thank you so much for watching this video, and I hope to see you out on the road sometime soon. Bye!