If you frequent the same parts of motorcycle YouTube as me, you’ve likely seen a lot of videos about mototorcycle camping — motocamping, to the cool kids — in the past few years. It’s been having a moment recently, coinciding with the popularity of adventure motorcycling, and I’ve long wanted to give it a try. Sure, I may not have real camping experience, but at least I had an adventure motorcycle!
Then, of course, that adventure motorcycle got stolen, and I replaced it with a lovely little Suzuki sportbike — a great motorcycle, but not exactly what the YouTubers go motocamping on. As it turns out, though, that shouldn’t stop you. Whatever motorcycle you have is already set for camping, so long as you can sling a couple of bags on it and tolerate a couple of hours in the saddle. To prove it, I met up with a friend for a motocamping road trip all the way to Florida.
On the road
The astute among you will remember that I bought my BMW F800GS with hard luggage, only to turn around and immediately sell that luggage off to a close friend. What you wouldn’t know, though, is that I almost immediately replaced that luggage with soft bags from Touratech — bags that, conveniently, weren’t on the GS when it was stolen. The panniers I have are long since discontinued, replaced with the company’s Discovery 2 modular system, but I picked mine out for their rackless design. Since they don’t require pannier racks, they can be mounted on nearly any bike — including my little Suzuki.
Those little rackless panniers gave me 40 liters of storage to work with, enough to fit an entire motocamping kit: A tent, an inflatable sleeping pad, an inflatable pillow, spare clothes, a tire repair kit, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a first aid kit with bug spray, a battery pack for my phone, a camp blanket, a water bottle, my full kitchen setup (camp stove an dpost, dish soap and brush, and utensils), and a headlamp. I also wore my trusty USWE hydration pack, which carried an additional three liters of water plus the most essential of essentials — keys, wallet, and hair ties. With the camp kit packed up, the route set, and food ready to be bought en route, I was all set to head to Florida.
Northward, Ho!
The town of Florida, Massachusetts, that is — I’m a trans woman, I’m not going to the state of Florida. I met up with my friend Graham in western Mass — the friend who bought my GS’s hard cases, and who took on the Trans-Mass Trail with me back in 2023 — and the two of us linked our Cardos and headed north towards the Vermont border. In classic camping fashion, we grabbed all our necessary dinner supplies at a grocery store in town and arrived at camp well after dark. This not only made the whole “cooking dinner” thing more difficult than it needed to be, but it also meant that both of us were setting up our sleeping kits (my tent, sleeping pad, pillow and blanket; Graham’s hammock kit) for the first time under cover of darkness. God bless headlamps.
Waking up in a tent next to your bike is a fantastic experience, one I plan on doing more often and one I’d recommend to anyone. I had concerns before the trip (like whether my little dry bags would actually fit a full camping kit, or whether my bike would be comfortable for the length of the ride) as well as while on the trip itself (like whether my street tires would actually be able to climb out of our sunken, grassy campsite) but it handled everything with aplomb — it didn’t care about the cargo or the grass, it simply did what it needed to do. If you’re looking to go out motocamping, don’t let your choice in bike stop you. Take your Ninja, your Sportster, your Duke, and just go out there. So long as you can strap a tent or a hammock to it, you can camp off the bike you already have.
