When I first thought about adding a day or two of hiking to this year’s scooter trip to the UP, I figured I could just fudge it somehow using my existing gear. Not by bringing my full internal-frame backpack, which I’d used years ago on week-long backpacking trips. After all, I wouldn’t need to pack anything close to that amount of food and other gear, and transporting that rigid behemoth on my scooter simply wouldn’t work. But by using the old daypack (well, more like a bookpack) I’ve had forever: I’d put my clothes and sleeping bag in the pack, strap the tent to the outside somehow, and carry the rest of what I’d need in my shoulder bag.

Well, maybe not.

I’ve just dug out all of the gear I plan to bring – the same gear I’ve been taking on the past several scooter trips, plus cooking equipment with some freeze-dried food and some other nicknacks – and I just can’t see how to put it all together with the bags I have. The daypack is also showing its age, starting to come apart as the seams. And since it wasn’t designed to carry a full load like I’m looking to stuff it with (it has no hip strap, for example), I’m not sure it’d work, even for a couple days of hiking.

So I think I’m going to have to invest in a proper daypack (big enough to strap a small tent to). I hesitate to spend the money, because I’m really not much of a weekend camper: I prefer to go all-in for a week in the wilderness. But maybe once I’m done with the long rides like this, spending some weekends on nearby trails might be a good idea for future get-aways.

Lowell is bicycling distance from my house. At least it was back when I was bicycling regularly. Yesterday I took a day off from work (mostly just because) and the weather was nice, so I rode the scooter out to Lowell, on Grand River Drive. I’m about a month away from the first extended ride of the year, so I figured it was a good time to at least do a day trip.

The scooter performed excellently. I brought it into the shop at the end of the winter for the most extensive service since I bought him. New rear tire (3rd so far), new transmission belt and rollers (first time), gear-old change, new fuel filter and spark plug, front brake line replaced (it’d worn a hole in it from rubbing against the wheel), and assorted minor bits. And it’s running as good as new, literally. I’m getting a little over 40mph on level groud, and my last fill-up was nearly 90mpg. I’m about 500 miles from hitting 20,000 miles, and as far as I can tell, it’ll make it to 40,000. The muffler’s looking a bit corroded, and I swear it’s gotten louder than it used to be, but that’ll be just another maintenance part to replace.

I’ve been to and through Lowell many times, but I don’t usually have lunch there, so I used an app on the phone to show me what was available. Even this close to Grand Rapids, I was already down to a 1G data connection. Before I switched from AT&T to T-Mobile to save money, I didn’t know that such service was still online; I’d always gotten at least EDGE (aka “2G”), but T-Mobile apparently still has some towers running the data service offered before that. It shows up as a little circle in the signal indicator. I knew T-Mobile had lousy rural service when I switched, so I figure I’ll get AT&T pre-paid service on a temporary number for the times I’ll be on the road. Coverage is still spotty in the western UP, but should be about as good as the service I had on my first UP ride in 2009.

Not much to report, just that I’ve made the last of my pre-ride expenditures.

I’ve purchased reserved tickets on both ferries: the Badger to get me to Wisconsin and back, and the Isle Royale Queen IV to get me to the island and back. The scooter needed a ticket to ride with me on the first of those. The cost of these was $340, a substantial chunk of my budget for the trip.

I’ve also just had the scooter fixed and serviced. He needed a new front brake line, rear tire, belt and rollers, and battery. All that (and the regular maintenance done while he was in for repairs) set me back another $360, but I don’t count that as part of the cost of the trip, because I’d be spending that money regardless. The additional mileage I’ve put on the scooter from the previous years’ trips made some of the replacement parts necessary a bit sooner (at the beginning the year instead of the end), but the road trips have only been about 1/4 of my total miles.

All that’s left for me to spend is the money I’ll spend during the trips: fuel for the scooter ($100 budgeted for both rides combined), food for me ($300), and a few incidentals along the way, such as doing laundry and a few park/camping fees that I can’t pay in advance.

I’ve just gone through and made all of my campground reservations, for both the 5-day/4-night trip between here and Grand Traverse in June, and for the 11-day/10-night trip to Isle Royale and back, in July. I’m now almost $250 committed to these trips.

That doesn’t mean I have reservations for every night, though. In fact, I’ve only reserved 9 nights for both trips. What’s still un-reserved are:

• On the first trip, two nights on the Manistee River at campgrounds that aren’t part of the state parks, and don’t accept reservations. One of those doesn’t even charge.
• Two nights on Isle Royale. The campgrounds there are always first-to-get-there-gets-it, which has always worked out for me.
• One night on the S.S. Badger, doing the “red-eye” crossing of Lake Michigan on the way back. I’ll need to reserve this soon to get the best price, but I haven’t yet. (I’ll also need to reserve the Isle Royale Queen for the crossing to the Island and back, but that isn’t a sleeper.)

The general choice of places where I’m stopping each night was determined mostly based on geography: here’s the route I want to take, so here are the state parks that are the right distance apart. But within each state park, when given a choice, I took the most rustic option. If there was a loop of the campground without electricity, I picked a site there. If the sites all had electricity, I chose one as woodsy and out-of-the-way as I could. The theme of the year is roughing it. Each trip is going to include two days hiking and camping in the wild, so why not keep the camping experience for the riding days similar? I’m also considering cooking at the campgrounds instead of going into town for supper on riding days, but that would introduce some new logistical challenges (food, cooking fuel), so I’m not sure about that.

(The only exception to the most-rustic rule was Ludington State Park, the first night of the second ride. They have some walk-in tent-only sites off in the dunes, but those are about a mile from the road. I need to get to the dock pretty early the next morning to take the Badger across the Lake, and that would require setting an earlier wake-up alarm and rushing a bit. I don’t want to do that.)

It’s official: I just made the first nonrefundable commitment to the big ride for 2013.

The first night of my trip up to Isle Royale is going to be at Ludington State Park, chosen mostly for its proximity to the port that the S.S. Badger departs for Wisconsin. It’s also a really popular lakeshore park, which gets booked up in the summer. As I was finalizing my budget, and checking to see how much each night’s camping would cost, I discovered that there were only two sites still available for the night I intended to stay there. That date is in July. And it’s February.

So I reserved one of them. I haven’t officially received approval to take the time off from work, but that’s a pretty safe gamble… and at worst I’m only out 35 bucks.

When I stayed at Ludington four years ago, I got a no-electricity tent-only site, but all of those were already taken for the night I want this year. There were just these two. I know I didn’t make my reservations earlier in the year back in 2009, because I didn’t even have the scooter yet in February.

The two remaining sites were decent options for my purposes; the reason these particular ones weren’t reserved yet was probably because they’re small (one was limited to two tents, no RVs). But they were each reserved the night before and after. I think the park does have some sites that are not reservable, which are available on a first-come basis. But I’ll be arriving late in the afternoon, so I can’t take my chances with that.

So $35 down… just another $1000ish (mostly lodging, food, and a couple ferries) to go.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the backpacking part of next year’s UP ride. I’m not too concerned about it, but it would make sense to do a trial run closer to home beforehand. Make sure I’ve figured out how to pack my gear. Confirm that my hiking legs still work. And it’d be a great way to spend a few days.

One option would be the trail connecting Waterloo and Pinckney State Recreation Areas, between Lansing and Detroit. It’s considered the best longish (36 miles) hiking trail in southeast Michigan… which admittedly isn’t saying a lot, but I’ve stayed at both Rec Areas on previous rides, and kind of wished I had time to do the hike between them.

But I have my eye mainly on a loop in the area west of Cadillac, consisting of the Manistee River Trail and a segment of the North Country Trail. The Manistee River Trail runs for 11 miles along the east side of Manistee River, which is popular for canoeing and fishing. At the north end it hooks up (via a suspension bridge over the river) with a segment of the North Country Trail, which is a more up-and-down-y trail to the west of the river, connecting again with the southern end of the Manistee River Trail. (The North Country Trail is a 4600-mile trail on par with the Appalachian Trail… or at least it will be when it’s finished… running from upstate New York to North Dakota, with a long stretch through west Michigan and the UP.) It’d be a 125-mile ride up there, a couple days on the trail, then a ride back. Just enough to make sure I’ve got the ride-hike combo properly equipped.