Just before the Memorial Day weekend Mia was back in New Hampshire visiting family for ten days. I had to pick her up at the airport on Saturday evening so for my final night of the solo life I decided on a quick overnight bikepacking trip up to Stub Stewart. Long time readers of this blog may notice that is the park I tend to visit the most for these quick overnights. Mostly because it is barely more than 20 miles from my house. I can work all day on a Friday, get there relatively quickly and then be home early enough the next day. The other convenient factor for me is that I get out of the urban sprawl of the metro area quick using Stub as the option. For this particular trip I worked all day at my office in Beaverton, took the MAX blue line to Hillsboro airport and rode the 27(ish) miles from there up to my site.

I keep trying different sites at the Brooke Creek walk-in part of the campground. Site 4 was okay; the tent pad sloped a bit downhill. I don’t think I have a particular favorite just yet but will continue to try them all out for now.

I had forgotten that this particular tent was in need of some TLC. The bungee cord for the tent poles is totally blown out and has quite literally no elasticity remaining. I was still able to setup my tent, but it proved to be a tad slow and frustrating. Since it was only one night, I could deal with it. Had this been a longer trip, I would have been kicking myself for not fixing this sooner.

Just today I sent the poles back to Big Agnes for repair. They sell the bungee cord for a DIY repair at home and have a good video online on how to do it. I’m feeling a bit lazy to take the time to do it myself and their reply back to me via email was it would cost ~$20 in labor to have them do it……..SOLD! No skin off my back to have their folks do it.

Being an overnight trip, I kept my food cooking options simple. I brought two Mountain House dehydrated meals, one for dinner, one for breakfast. Also, some Trader Joe’s instant coffee and a lemonade and slice of apple pie from Jim’s Market in Banks topped it all off.

Given that this was a Friday night of a holiday weekend and the weather looked to be pretty great, the lack of campers at the walk-in sites was kind of surprising. There was a couple in site two, another down near the lower communal fire pit, a family over near sites 18/19 and two other folks, at individual sites, who also biked in. There are 21 total sites at the Brooke Creek hike-in area and only about five of them appeared to be taken. I wonder if more people showed up for Saturday night?

I was pretty much packed up and rolling home just after 8AM. It was in the mid 40’s when I first got up but by the time I hit the Banks-Vernonia Trailhead it had climbed into the mid 50’s.

Before the final 11 miles home I made the (almost) mandatory stop at Local Joy for a real coffee and one of their fantastic chocolate chip scones. Don’t know what it is about these scones but damn they are good!

I had promised myself more bike camping in 2026. So far this has been the second trip of the year and I foresee a couple more on the horizon.

Thanks for reading,

-Pete