Welcome to the Wild Ideas Worth Living Summer Camp Series! In these bonus episodes, we’re exploring camping beyond the traditional tent—from bikepacking and packrafting to camping with kids and dispersed car camping. Today, we're diving into the world of water-based camping with MAK and Owen, the founders of Bound For Nowhere— a popular adventure blog, social media community, and storytelling brand.
Welcome to the Wild Ideas Worth Living Summer Camp Series! In these bonus episodes, we’re exploring camping beyond the traditional tent—from bikepacking and packrafting to camping with kids and dispersed car camping.
Today, we're diving into the world of water-based camping with MAK and Owen, the founders of Bound For Nowhere— a popular adventure blog, social media community, and storytelling brand.
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Shelby Stanger:
Welcome to our summer miniseries all about camping. In these bonus episodes, we're going beyond the standard tent and campsite setup. From bikepacking and rafting to camping with kids and dispersed car camping. Over the next four weeks, we're talking to people who are camping their own way, sharing what works, what doesn't, and how you can try it too. I'm Shelby Stanger and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard.
Today we're plunging into the world of water-based camping, whether that's traveling by canoe, kayak, stand-up paddleboard, or raft. Cruising along waterways can be a great way to rest your legs, take the weight off your back, and slow down. Plus you get to pick the pace. You can amp things up by paddling down rapids or keep it calm by skimming across serene lakes. Best of all, traveling by water gives you freedom to explore, accessing hidden coves, secret waterfalls, and quiet beaches that most campers will never see. When you're ready to settle down for the night, you'll have the sound of flowing water to lull you to sleep. To introduce us to water-based adventures, we're talking to MAK and Owen, the founders of Bound For Nowhere, which is a popular adventure blog, social media community, and storytelling brand. For the last nine years, MAK and Owen have lived in a truck camper, driving across the country and spending as much time in nature as possible.
When it comes to the water, MAK and Owen are primarily packrafters, which means they hike into harder-to-access waterways with a portable inflatable boat in their backpack. Once they arrive at their put-in, they inflate their rafts, transfer gear from their packs to the boat, and paddle along for days at a time. With countless river miles under their belt, MAK and Owen are here to share their insights on gear selection, safety, and how to plan your perfect day on the water. MAK and Owen, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm so excited to have some really interesting packrafting people on the show.
MAK:
Thank you.
Owen:
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Shelby Stanger:
I love a good adventure love story. How did you two meet?
MAK:
We were on the swim team in college together and we just had a mutual affection for being outside, doing interesting things, and a healthy dose of competitive nature between the two of us. And I think that something about my relationship with Owen is that, from the beginning we haven't been gift givers, we're experience givers instead. And so instead of prioritizing giving each other something, we always try to go give each other a really great experience. And it was like that from the first date. I think that the best way to put it is that has escalated into what our life is now and that is nine years of full-time travel, and that is camping because we live in a truck.
Shelby Stanger:
You guys have made camping and exploring your entire life and your whole career. How did you guys become expert campers, especially campers that travel by water like packrafting?
MAK:
I think that we have become experts by sheer practice. We have now nine years of experience with different forms of camping. And I think that you get better at things by also failing at them and failing quite miserably. I can speak to many, many nights where we went out to go camp, we're like, "Oh, this is going to be so awesome. This is going to be rad." And then it ends up being a miserable failure. Some of the coldest nights of my life. Nights where we zipped our sleeping bags together, huddled together for warmth, and we still ended up just leaving at 4:00 AM because we were so cold that we were just like, "I just need to start walking or else I will die out here."
You have to make mistakes. And I think it's also being willing to make mistakes, learn from them, and then also continue to feel intrigued to come out and try again, but also to try different things, which is ultimately I think how we got into packrafting was just realizing that there was another way that we could do this and wanting to explore a new type of terrain.
Shelby Stanger:
What is packrafting?
MAK:
So packrafting is taking the idea of canoe and water travel, but having the ability to get your boat into remote places. So a packraft is literally a boat that can be packed in with you.
Shelby Stanger:
Are these this foldable kayak things I saw in Big Bear?
MAK:
The industry has come a long way, thankfully. So my family had a packraft growing up and it came in this huge duffel bag. It took up the whole backseat of the minivan. But packrafts now today there's foldable varieties, there's inflatable kind. I just think that it's really cool to see the innovations that have come of the industry because it's now allowing people to access different waterways, different types of water. And I think that ultimately the type of boat that you take is going to be dictated by the type of water that you're wanting to access.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me why you'd use a packraft.
MAK:
Okay, I'm going to preface this. A lot of the type of fun that we like to do requires a fair bit of suffering. But that's a part of the fun. Type 2 fun.
Shelby Stanger:
Type 2 fun.
MAK:
We're all about it. So one of these trips that we did was a grueling 20-mile hike in, but then it was seven days of just floating out of this river system on the water. So it was a really challenging hike in, but then it gave us the ability to explore this entire river. And it was just so fun because we were able to be like, "Oh, this looks like an incredible fishing spot. We'll just pull over, throw a couple of casts in the water, keep going, or this looks like a great spot to camp."
Shelby Stanger:
How much do these boats weigh? How much stuff are you carrying?
MAK:
It all depends on the type of trip that you're trying to take. How you are getting there will also dictate how much weight you can take and how much the boats physically weigh. Our boats weigh about seven and a half pounds. And I know that they can go all the way up to being 20, 30 pound, but there's also even lighter boats that are super featherweight. Some of them even pack down to be the size of a roll of paper towels, so to speak.
Shelby Stanger:
Amazing. Tell me about other gear that comes with the boat.
Owen:
Right. So you want to have a life jacket, and helmet, things like that-
MAK:
Important safety equipment.
Owen:
... depending if you're going on white water. It adds up a little bit more when you add some of the extra pieces of gear. We have these paddles that break up into four pieces and so we'll just shove them in our backpack.
MAK:
And they're carbon fiber so they weigh practically nothing. And then you're going to need rope or some form of device for rescuing fellow paddlers for general safety equipment. Dry bags are always necessary. A lot of these packrafts are air-inflatable so you also want a repair kit.
Owen:
One thing we haven't mentioned yet is that what's unique about these packrafts is that you throw your gear inside the tubes of the packraft itself.
MAK:
Physically inside the boat.
Owen:
So they're sitting inside it. So you unzip the entire thing, throw your gear in, and then you zip it close, and then inflate it. So it really becomes backpacking but in the water and your boat's carrying it all.
MAK:
And then you're also wanting to make sure that you can keep your boat relatively balanced because that balance is going to be important because it's going to help you with maneuverability and all that. Because if your boat is off balance, it can be really unwieldy in the water and that can be pretty unsafe. You obviously need to have your full standard camping gear, but again, it all has to fit. We typically go with a lightweight backpacking setup, but you are afforded a little bit of extra luxuries.
Shelby Stanger:
What's the important piece of equipment, a must-have?
Owen:
I mean, if we're being safe, the PFD is definitely the most important.
MAK:
A PFD or a personal flotation device is like a life jacket that you wear and it's almost like a triangle of foam in the front and in the back. Ours have really handy pockets in the front. I keep my cell phone in there so it's easy to grab if we pass any wildlife or just want to grab a video. And it's also nice for keeping a little bit of sunscreen or ChapStick in and then it also has a really convenient hook for the PFD knife.
Shelby Stanger:
Tell me about some of your early mistakes.
MAK:
Early mistakes, I feel like I... I am afraid to admit this out loud. Sorry, mom, if you hear this. We definitely have gone on trips without life jackets, like fully forgotten life jackets. That's a no-no.
Owen:
Get it.
MAK:
We got pulled over by the National Park Service police on boat because we didn't have life jackets. And then they gave us these really awful ugly orange ones which were our cone of shame, so to speak. It was an honest mistake, we just forgot them, but don't do that.
Shelby Stanger:
What are some things to take into account when planning for a packrafting trip?
MAK:
You always are wanting to understand how many days you're wanting to travel for. Work backwards to figure out how much food-
Owen:
I think the other big thing too is that, if you're traveling on river, you're going from one point to another, so you have to have your shuttle planned. You're going to need a car to get you there, but then a car to get you back to your original starting point. And so I think that there's a little bit more logistics that go into it than just a normal backpacking trip where you might walk and then come right back to the same spot.
Shelby Stanger:
How do you guys plan for that?
MAK:
We typically like to do packrafting trips with people just because that's always going to help with the shuttling. If we don't have additional people or we cannot figure out a shuttle, what we'll do is a trip where you're hiking along the river in and then you're just jumping into the river and floating back to the same place.
Shelby Stanger:
And then how do you decide where you actually go?
Owen:
So we usually identify a body of water that we're interested in traversing on the boats, and then we'll work backwards from there, trying to figure out a start and an endpoint, the closest points we can get to with a car. And then from there, we're figuring out trails for hiking to get us to the water, things like that. And then even more macro into that, you're looking and seeing public land boundaries, things like that to see where you can camp, where you can't camp, and then planning the route with all of those variables determined.
Shelby Stanger:
Is there a strategy on how you pack your backpack and how you pack your boat?
MAK:
So how you pack your backpack versus how you pack your boat are going to be pretty different. When I leave for a trip in backpack form, so before arriving at the water, everything is deconstructed. I would say that I'm in backpacking mode. And the way that typically looks for us is all of our food is in a bag, all of our cook setup is together. We got tent, sleeping bag, dry bag with clothes, then rolled up we have our big dry bags. These are the ones that are going to fit inside of the walls on each side of our boat. Then we have our deconstructed paddle, our PFD. And on the PFD we carry a knife, and that is just for the safety of being able to cut yourself out of your boat if something catastrophic happened. That's pretty important. And then the boat is rolled up on top of our bags.
Then when transitioning to the water, those two really big dry bags then become home for all of that gear. So one side will typically have the camping gear and the clothes, the other side will have the food and the cook set up, and that will often have to change around as you eat down your food and that side of your boat becomes light. You'll have to start moving clothes over to try to make sure you're balancing your boat. So that's going to change every day, but that's going to be entirely based off of how much weight you have on each side of your boat.
Shelby Stanger:
What about your clothes while you're on the water? Are you wearing different clothes than you would for hiking?
MAK:
Depends on water temperature. Because if you are in really cold water, particularly water that you could get hypothermia in, you're going to need a dry suit of some description. I will say that we have not ventured into those waters, so to speak. I just feel like we're... I don't want to say fair weather sailors. We just really love summer conditions on the water. And so-
Shelby Stanger:
Not many people like cold water rafting or surfing or any of it. It's not a fun.
MAK:
I've got some trips that I would love to do that will require a dry suit. But I think that when we are in the summer, decently warmish water, it's actually the exact same clothes that we are backpacking in. The only thing I was going to say is that I even go harder on the sun protection because when you're in a boat, you're literally just sitting there exposed to the sun. So a super broad hat. A lot of times I'll even wear gloves because you cannot wear enough sunscreen on your hands. Long sleeve, long pants.
And this is actually something else that feels like a weird thing. I made the mistake on going on a week-long river trip and I did not take lotion or enough lotion. When you are getting in and out of water that frequently, it does not matter the climate that you're in, it will dry your skin out so fast. Always, always take a little bit more lotion than you think that you need on a river trip. But two sets of clothes, usually a dry set, a wet set, you come off the river at the end of the day, you change into your dry set of clothes, and dry everything out overnight.
Owen:
Yeah. If it's breezy, I think that a rain jacket is always nice to just repel the water so it's not just soaking you. And if you're in white water, sometimes you're going to get wet. And then we really love hiking sandals for footwear for that kind of stuff. It makes getting in and out so much easier.
MAK:
Yeah. Our personal favorite are Bedrock Sandals that they have really great Vibram soles, so you're not slipping or anything around the water. But hiking in, you want a full support shoe just because you're carrying a lot of weight. So any extra love you can give your feet on the way in.
Shelby Stanger:
Is there any other tips that you wish you'd known early?
MAK:
Okay, yes. We have been recommended a book that is called The Packraft Handbook. It's an incredible resource that is everything from boat care to paddling safety, knot tying, how to dress for different types of weather, rescue scenarios. This is an incredible book. I wish we had it sooner. I just think it's really good from a safety perspective to be as knowledgeable as humanly possible before you start venturing out into the water, and this is a great resource to start with.
Shelby Stanger:
What's your best advice for someone trying to packraft camp for the very first time?
MAK:
I would say start slow and go somewhere close and familiar. The reason for that is if you go in and you feel like you're not comfortable, you forgot something, you need to go home early. I just think that removing as much of the pressure from this scenario is always a great place to start. Or even don't necessarily go out and camp for the first time, just go have a picnic on the other side. And then assess and figure out what can I do better next time, what can I do to make myself feel more comfortable about it, do I need to bring someone else with me and just slowly progress into it that way.
Shelby Stanger:
What are some of the most beautiful things you've seen while packraft camping?
MAK:
We have floated past a mama and her calf moose just going down the river. And the thing is, because you are just going with the literal flow, they see so many other animals that do that, you are not taken as a threat. They just observe you, you observe them. It just feels like because you're coming on them in this very natural way, you feel like you're really participating in the environment rather than going out and conquering it. It's just a very different experience. It just feels like you are really there just being a part of all of it.
Shelby Stanger:
Can you walk me through an ideal day on the water from sunup to sundown?
MAK:
Oh my gosh. This is like describing my perfect date. For us, usually days on the river. Let's just say we've already backpacked in, the hard work is behind us. We've woken up and we're at a camp spot that's right on the water, and you know we slept well because you can hear the babbling river right next to our tent. Usually, because you're right on the water, it's usually a very chill entrance into the day. So we'll slowly break down camp, have some coffee, hit the water, and you're just cruising your way down the river. Every once in a while there'll be a little spicy feature that comes up because we enjoy some white water and have to navigate those features.
A lot of times if we see good rocks to jump off of, we'll pull over, find a great rock to sun on, and have some lunch. You can be a little bit more elaborate with your food when you're packrafting, which is fun. You can fully open your boat and pull your cook stove out and make something a little bit more elaborate. We've even fished and just cooked the fish that we caught occasionally right there by the water. The days they're so peaceful and they just slip away. I cannot even begin to fully describe the level of chill that it feels like.
Owen:
Quite literally going with the flow.
MAK:
Yeah, all day.
Shelby Stanger:
MAK and Owen sold me on packrafting. Floating down a lazy river, occasionally encountering mild rapids for a little adrenaline rush, and stopping on little beaches to camp. It sounds so amazing. One other thing that MAK and Owen told me was that it's important to remember that water levels are variable. You can search online for recent trip reports to see what the current conditions are like and to make sure any rapids are safe for your skill level. While MAK and Owen are mostly into packrafting, a lot of their advice is applicable to other forms of water camping, think stand-up paddleboarding, canoeing, and even kayaking. To follow MAK and Owen's adventures, you can find them on Instagram @bound.for.nowhere or on their website at boundfornowhere.com. You can also check out their podcast called Camp Nowhere wherever you listen. Tune in next week to learn all about camping with kids.
Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI podcast network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, and produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producers are Jenny Barber and Hanna Boyd. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show. Take a moment to rate it and leave a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.