Kayaks
We live on a bayou off the Pascagoula River on the Mississippi Coast so we’ve had many different kayaks over the years.
Now, we both have Eddyline sit inside kayaks. Janet has the Rio which was chosen because it was made for the smaller paddler, only weighs 35 pounds and is 11’ 9” long. Weight is important when having to lift them up on the racks of our F-250 truck!
Dave has the Skylark. At 12’ long and 41 pounds, it takes a little more ‘umph’ to get over ours heads to load. Still, very do-able.
Right now these relatively light weights kayaks meet our style of travel. It is always nice to have them available when we find that perfectly gorgeous lake or river to paddle. They have the best speed and tracking of our previous kayaks and we are very pleased with them.
Bicycles
We have e-bikes. Yep, we’re old! We both are Specialized brand. I like their logo, ‘YOU only faster’. Believe me, you can still get plenty of exercise on an e-bike. Although we do not have mountain bikes we do use them for forest service roads and dirt and gravel bike trails. Rails to Trails are great also. Our least favorite kind of riding is along side a road, but sometimes you have to do that to get to better things.
Janet has a Specialized Turbo Como 4.0 bought in 2019 (new). It’s a fantastic bike with lots of power (4X YOU) for those steep hills and rough trails. Going up steep hills is what convinced me that I needed an e-bike. Its drawback is that it is somewhat heavy at around 50 pounds depending on what is in my saddle bag. Taking the battery off lightens it up some. We store this bike at the front in the camper partially under the table and leaning against the sink.
Dave’s e-bike is a Turbo Vado SL bought in 2022 (new). The ‘SL’ means super light. Because it is the SL model it is 2X YOU rather than 4X like mine. A big plus to this bike is that you can turn off the motor and it is light enough to use as a non-electric bike with no motor drag. (The Como weighs too much and has too much motor drag for this). This bike only weights 33 pounds and fits nicely between our twin bed in the Airstream.
We both love our current bikes but also think that it would be really nice to have front and seat post suspension. I’ve got my eye on the Turbo Como 5.0 IGH (internal gear hub) if it EVER comes back in stock in my size!
We’ve logged many, many miles on our bikes and one of the most fun things we’ve done is riding UP the Creeper Trail in Virginia and then down. It was amazing how much more there is to see when you are not gripping your brakes!
Thoughts on folding bikes
On a side note: Before Dave’s Turbo Vado SL he rode a foldable Mosso e-bike from Luna Cycle. He had actually bought the bike for me when I had decided that riding in the mountains with him was just not fun. We thought that a folding bike would be the best thing for traveling and planned to carry it under the truck’s tonneau cover. The bike and the way we carried it had flaws. When you have a bike all nicely folded and tucked away you are less likely to get it out at each campground. ‘This campground doesn’t have good riding’ came up more often than we anticipated. The biggest flaw was I just didn’t like it! Most folding bikes have a straight handle post to the wheel which makes the steering squirrely at times. Especially on rough gravel and rock roads like the Creeper Trail in Virginia. I rode it about half way down and made Dave change bikes with me for the rest of the ride and never used it again. I promptly bought my current e-bike and Dave rode the Mosso for a couple of years before getting his Vado. We quit folding the Mosso and just carried it in the Airstream along with my bike and got both out at every camp stop.
Folding bikes would be great for short trips around the campground or even to close near by towns. In our experience if you plan on riding non-paved trails a full size bike is much more stable. The batteries have much more riding time longevity. Dave is really enjoying his new full size bike even though he also rode trails and lots of miles with the folding one.
Kittinger's Wanderings 