Packing Food to Travel in a Motorcycle Trailer

Summer time is motorcycle riding time! Bill and I spend one weekend a month camping beginning in May and ending in August. Normally, we eat at a restaurant,or food truck once during a three or four day camping trip. However, many times coffee is not available in the morning and I do not function without my coffee! Therefore, we travel with a two burner camp stove, a nine cup coffee pot, and a few groceries. 

Bill and I stopped at Grand Gulf State Park in Thayer, Missouri to admire the scenery and to stretch our legs See the cooler? . 

 Grocery List From Home

• 1 dozen eggs
• 1 stick of butter
• 1 pound of  bacon, put into a quart zip top bag and frozen.
• 2 pork cutlets, frozen or other frozen meat. 
• 4-5 large potatoes
• breakfast cereal
• ground coffee

Packing Food to Travel 

A motorcycle trailer doesn't have shocks. Everything in it, or on it must be cushioned. To get eggs from point A to point B, this is how I pack them:

1. I pack the eggs into an egg carrier. Next, it goes into the bottom of an insulated lunch cooler to further cushion the eggs. 
2. Then the frozen bacon, frozen cutlets, and stick of butter are loaded into the lunch cooler. 
3. The lunch cooler sits in the large cooler.

Kitchen Bag

We have a very large duffel bag that is almost as long as our trailer is wide. All of the kitchen supplies/cooking gear fit into. This is where I carry cereal and raw potatoes, too. 

Last year I borrowed an idea from Pinterest and bought a shoe organizer to use as a camp kitchen organizer. Click here to see picture and article.

I keep dish soap, scrubber sponge, salt, pepper, meat tenderizer, sugar, creamer, coffee grounds, trash bags, wet wipes, sunscreen, medicine, tent patches, twine, nylon rope, toilet paper, paper towels, etc. in each pocket. Then, I roll the organizer and place it into one end of the duffel bag. The coffee pot, skillet, plates, hot pads, matches, long lighter, collapsible water container, etc. go into this duffel bag 

Packing Items for Motorcycle Trailer Travel

1. Coffee - 1/3 cup packed into a zip top snack bag = 1 nine cup pot of coffee.  This is my formula for figuring out how much coffee to take. Plus, I add a couple of extra bags because my perking coffee pot will attract campers who do not have any coffee at their camp. lol...lol Once the snack bags are packed, I pack three bags into a zip top sandwich bag, just in case a snack bag opens up, the coffee is still contained in a bag. Yes, I learned this by having it happen! Plus, the sandwich bag will fit into a pocket in the kitchen organizer. 
2. Potatoes - Pack into a gallon, zip top freezer bag
3. Cereal- I pack the cereal into a plastic storage bowl with a lid. This prevents the cereal from being crushed to small pieces. Instead of bowls, I use nesting, plastic storage containers to eat cereal out of. 
4. Kitchen utensils: potato peeler, paring knife, short spatula etc.  Pack into a gallon, zip top freezer bag, let the air out of the bag, and roll tightly. 

Packing the Cooler   

• Two days before leaving, I fill two gallon zip top bags 2/3rds full of water and place the bags into the freezer. Each bag will yield a block of ice that weighs about six and a half pounds. These blocks will last in the cooler for at least four days. 

• While traveling, we only keep the two gallon bags of block ice, three - one liter bottles of water, three -  20 oz. bottles of soda, 1 small bag of ice cubes from the store, and the insulated lunch cooler in the large cooler. This is necessary to prevent too much weight from being placed on the trailer tongue at the ball hitch. 

The Grand Gulf has turned into small lake due to the copious amounts of rain Missouri has received  this year, 2015. 

Arriving at Our Campsite
Bill and I set up our tent as soon as we get to our destination camp site. We unload the kitchen bag, set up the air bed, and unload the cooler, chairs, and two, resin folding tables. However, we still have a short trip to make with me still pulling the trailer. We go shopping! Yep, we buy the rest of our water, soda, a half gallon of milk, ice, cheese, meat, and snacks at the local grocery store. Then it is time to go back to camp, completely fill the cooler, and unhitch the motorcycle trailer that is now going to be my portable storage for a camp kitchen. 

Bill's HD Roadglide parked beside our tent. Bill carries the tent on the back seat of his bike. 

Cooking at Camp

• You may have noticed that I have never mentioned cooking oil in my list of groceries. I do not use it. I use butter and bacon grease. However, if you absolutely must have oil, only carry a small quantity and keep it bagged up in a zip top bag. A little oil goes a long ways if it spills. I do not care to take a chance on it spilling inside the motorcycle trailer.  
• I carry one medium size camp skillet and cook all of our meals in the one skillet.  
• For breakfast, I cook bacon first, and place the cooked bacon on our two plates. (Put a paper towel over the plates to keep flying critters off of your food!) Next, I  add butter,if necessary, and  fry the potatoes. When the potatoes are done, I remove them from the skillet and divide them between the two plates. Now it is time to scramble, or fry the eggs!
• For dinner, I use 2-3 Tbsp. of butter to cook the potatoes and fry the meat in the skillet. Nothing tastes better after a long day outdoors than food cooked on a camp stove. 

The first thing I do when we are camping - get the coffee ready to perk! 

Daybreak on the Spring River at Griffin Park in Hardy, Arkansas.