Everything You Need To Know Before Your First Backpacking Trip

Everyone loves to travel around the world from time to time. However, you mostly don’t like to move around with a lot of luggage. Your best solution is a backpack. If it is your first backpacking trip, you’re probably wondering how to go about it. Worry no more; you’re in the right place.

Before you leave for your trip, here are a few tips on the things you must know if you are a first-time backpacker.

Warning. Contents may have shifted.

Tuesday morning, we left Gardiner at about 6:15am. We were surprised at the number of people up and about at that hour, but of course it gets light out so early right now.

Most of the traffic was heading in the opposite direction though. Hardly any cars in our lane going north.

We hung around Gardiner

Which turned out to be not a bad thing. We kind of like the town and the area. Reminds us a little bit of Dawson City, Yukon!

But, had we known that the weather wasn't going to be nearly as bad as they forecast, we probably would have done things differently. Oh well!

So far, they have been totally wrong

We knew they had been forecasting this stretch of bad weather, with Monday (today) being the worst of it. But we woke up this morning expecting to see a dusting of snow on the ground... or at least some rain. But nothing. No precipitation at all so far.

We made a point of going out for a long hike yesterday because we kind of figured we would be stuck inside all day today. But that may not be the case now. We'll see.

Drive through Yellowstone National Park

Once again, we got up early and started driving right away. There's some bad weather coming this way, and we wanted to get into Montana. Our route would take us right through Yellowstone National Park, and all of the campgrounds in the park are still closed.

And, it was a bit of a drive with lots to see along the way. In fact, we took almost 125 pictures. I whittled them down to about 50, so prepare yourself for quite a few photos in this blog post!

Camped with a view?

We were on the road by 6:30am on Friday morning. We're not having any problem getting up early now that we're approaching the longest day of the year. Even now, the sun doesn't set until after 9:00pm, and it is light again by 5:30am!

And, it looked like another nice day although once again they were calling for the winds to pick up after lunch.

Camped beside the river

We got all our driving done in the morning, well before the afternoon winds picked up. Sooo much nicer driving when it's calm. Stopped in Pinedale to have breakfast and use the internet, then headed a bit further north.

We pulled in to the Warren Bridge BLM area. There are nine different free camping locations spread along the Green River over a distance of about 8 miles (13 kms).

Back on the road

We got a bit of a late start Wednesday morning. We had left the mechanic shop before they opened and headed to Walmart to do a bit of stocking up. When we left there, Sherman's volt meter was reading low. I figured maybe there was a bad connection related to what the mechanic had done since they had the alternator removed as part of the job changing the water pump.

So we headed back to the mechanic shop.

Motorhome repair and maintenance costs... and Sherman's future

We are back on the road this morning after spending another $798 USD ($1076 CAD) on repairs, this time to Sherman's water pump. But, we not only got a new water pump, we also got a new fan clutch, a new serpentine belt and a new thermostat. The labor and the parts were split pretty much half and half.

Rock Springs Auto Repair looked after us really well, They gave us an accurate estimate before starting the job, they ordered the parts right away, and they got to the job as soon as the parts showed up. They were also very fair on the labor costs, charging a total of 2.5 hours when I know the guy spent close to 4. I would not hesitate to recommend these guys if you need something done while in the area.

Stuck in Rock Springs, Wyoming

But, it shouldn't be for too long!

We left the Flaming Gorge Reservoir early. We didn't have any internet access from there, so we got up at 6:30am and drove into the town of Green River and found some unsecured free WiFi. We spent some time there, but we needed a laundromat and I wanted to do some driving before the wind picked up again so we continued on to Rock Springs.

May Expenses

Well, here we are in the month of June already!

May expenses have been tallied, and here are the final numbers... we spent a total of $2,116 CAD ($1,560 USD at today's exchange rates). Not bad, considering we bought a bunch of "stuff" including a new phone.

Hello Wyoming!

Yesterday, we met up with Bob and Denise again just before the entrance to the Flaming Gorge Reservoir.

We crossed into Wyoming, and then set about to find a place to camp for the night. There are some beautiful free campsites on the shores of the reservoir, but some of them require a 4 wheel drive to get to. Still, we managed to find a great parking spot with a beautiful view.

How are we able to be out of Canada for so long?

We had a question yesterday from someone on our Facebook page...

"I'm curious how you are able to be out of Canada for so long."

And we've had similar questions from other people over the past several weeks that we've been in the Unites States. Prior to this virus thing, we were originally supposed to return to Canada in April for 10 days, and then again starting May 1st for most of the following six months.

National forest boondocking

We left Duchesne, Utah at around 9:30am and headed for the town of Vernal where there is a free RV dump station and water fill. Got that done, and then went looking for some drinking water to fill our 5 gallon jug. Usually, we can find self serve purified water places, and they are quite common in Texas and New Mexico but not so much here in Utah. Or at least not in the towns we have been in.

Ended up buying two single gallon jugs of spring water (on sale at $0.79 per gallon) to get us by until we can find somewhere to fill the big jug.

Seemed like business as usual...

We got on the road at about 9:00am. Finally, a day with very low winds, but warm... the high was about 86F (30C) with an overnight low about 60F (15C).

Had to do a few miles on the Interstate highway... speed limit is 80 mph (128 km/h) but of course Sherman toddles along at only 60 mph (102 km/h) on these types of roads.