When Grant Petersen, owner of Rivendell Bicycle Works in Walnut Creek, Calif., presented the concept of the Sub-24 Hour Overnight (abbreviated S24O), he launched an improbable revolution in bicycle touring.
Petersen, a bicycle touring advocate, recognized that most people can't take off weeks or months to do a cross-country bicycle tour. Many can't even break free for a full weekend, so why not ride to a campground in the evening, pitch a tent and get back home in time to go to work? In short, get most of the benefits of a full-blown bike tour from a trip that takes less than a full day.
S24O has a dedicated following, but what do you do when you live in a metro area like the Twin Cities, where nearby campgrounds are plentiful but frequently booked months in advance? It takes a dedicated soul to book a weeknight camping trip in July while the snow is flying in February.
Three Rivers Parks District offers a novel solution. Last year, in a soft launch, Three Rivers introduced its bikes-only campsite at the Lake Auburn campground in Carver Park Reserve in Victoria. It solved the reservation problem by creating a site that is large enough for a half-dozen tents and a couple of hammocks. Bike campers don't reserve the entire site — instead they pay a $10 per tent reservation fee, and set up camp.
On a quiet night, there may be one tent. On busy nights, campers share the site with others, all of them arriving by bike. Darren Dummer, a Three Rivers Parks operations supervisor, summed up the concept: "Bike campers … can look at the weather and say 'Let's jump on our bikes and go camping!'
"All the amenities of the campground are available to the bike campers: swimming beach, play area, fishing pier, canoe and kayak rentals."
The site also has some bicycle-specific amenities. Tom McDowell, the recently retired associate superintendent, and others acted on feedback from bike tourists.
"We realized that first-rate campgrounds for RVs and car camping aren't automatically ideal for campers arriving by bike," McDowell said.
