Fat Bike Packing to Gifford Lake

Heath and I rode along the Minnesota River south west of Chaska from my house last weekend.  Goal was an easy ride to an easy over night camping experience at some random spot along the trail from Chaska to Belle Plaine.  

 We did not go very far since night was coming fast.  A wrong turn was a good time to take a pic.

 On front is a Revelate sling with a dry bag that held my tent, sleeping bag and poncho/tarp.  I also tried out a Revelate feed bag this trip in place of the gas tank bag.

We took lights but got to the random place we camped before dark.  In the future I want to go to here to camp.

 I made a berbere pine nut vermicelli and olive oil dish that tuned out great.   I definitely need to do this again.  It had big flavor a small carrying size and a lot of good calories.  Toasting the pine nuts, berbere and a little salt over the fire added a great smoky fresh toasted dimension to the dish.

 Heath used his Nemo bivy tenty thing.  I think the bright color makes it look less like a body bag.

 I used a Surly junk strap to tie the MLD duomid to a tree branch so I would not need a pole inside.   I am really loving the no floor tent design.  It is easier to manage dirty shoes and potentially wet objects inside the tent and you get one more level of being connected with the outdoors.

 If you click the pic below to enlarge it you can kind of see that Heath has added another stem and bar to his bike to work like my handle bare bag holding sling setup.  He strapped a dry bag to the extra bar and stem which prevents it from interfering with the bar you hang onto.  I think it works as good or better than my more costly set up and it looks so good I didn't notice he had an extra stem until he pointed it out.  Only down side is that it would be harder to take off if you did not want the extra stem on between camp trips.