Stealth cyclists sleep cheap

 

Our stealth site in Wyoming's Great Basin

It’s hard to imagine a less expensive way to travel than by bicycle, particularly if you don’t mind camping.

Bicycle touring is even cheaper if you are OK “stealth camping”—that is, discreetly pitching your tent or hanging your hammock in the woods on the side of the road, and making do without the bathrooms, picnic tables, fire rings and similar luxuries provided at established campgrounds that charge fees.

My friend Jim and I got a taste of stealth camping on a remote, 400-mile section of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route between Pinedale WY and Steamboat Springs CO last summer.

On this part of the GDMBR, which goes through Wyoming’s beautiful but austere Great Basin, you have no choice but to stealth camp, because motels and campgrounds are as rare as potable water on the route.

There is plenty of publicly owned land, however, where you are free to camp pretty much wherever you want, and that’s what we did.

I’m fine with stealth camping on public land. But I don’t believe I would be comfortable camping without permission on private land, particularly where signs discouraging trespassing are posted.

Many touring cyclists stealth camp as much as possible, though, at least partly for economic reasons. 

“I used to call it, eating out of the garbage can and sleeping in the ditch,” says George Recker, 74, who went on his first bike tour in the late 1960s and has been a stealth-camping aficionado ever since.

Recker stealth site in Texas

Key things to look for in potential stealth sites are flat spots for tents, nearby water sources, cover, and perhaps a great view, veteran cyclists say.

Recker’s eight survival rules:

1. Don’t be seen leaving the road.
2. Don’t camp where a car can be driven.
3. Eliminate or cover reflective material.
4. No fires.
5. Be quiet.
6. Set up late and leave early, if necessary.
7. Opt for subdued tent colors rather than bright ones.
8. Avoid sites within sight of buildings.

“I enjoy the process of finding interesting camps,” says Recker.

“It’s not always possible, but most of the time if you don’t panic a decent place appears . . . away from the fray.”

“The closer to dark the less picky I get.”

Recker on gravel near Eugene OR

One of our stealth sites in southern Wyoming. At least we weren't in the middle of the road!