Advice on a road tour

[Racingguy04]

So I'm planning a 3-4 day road touring trip in yellowstone national park this spring with a buddy. I'm thinking that I'd rather use my bikepacking setup and modify it a bit than trying to set up my road bike for the trip. My thought is to take my mountain bike (black diamond carbon overdrive hard tail) and gear it 28/42 in the front and run an 11-36 cassette in the rear. I also have some wood chipper bars (brake levers and bar end shifters) that I think I can make work. As far as wheels and tires I have standard 29er mtn bike wheels that are 21mm internal width and 25ishmm external width my thought is the simplest, most cost effective option to gain some efficiency is to run some 700 x 40c cyclocross or commuter slicks.

My buddy is going to be riding a gravel grinder (novara mazama) so it's not like I'm going to be trying to keep up with a road bike pace. Anybody see any obvious problems with this setup? Is there something I can do better?  I'd love to add a rigid fork but I don't think I can swing the money for it and I doubt I'd use it very much after this ride. I figure I'll run my frame bag, revelate viscacha, and I have a handlebar harness, I'm a little nervous about how big of a dry bag I can fit on the wood chipper bars but I figure I can make it work or go with flat mtn bike bars.

[Adam Alphabet]

Sounds well thought out and awesome. Just be sure to check the bar end shifters and the rest of your drivetrain for compatibility and the levers and brakes for the right pull. Otherwise Go for it!

[bigeyedfish]

Used rigid forks are usually pretty cheap. Might be worth it to look into that, but tires are going to be the biggest difference.

Usually after a couple hours our group of riders is matching each others' pace pretty well, so the set up changes may not matter much.

[Racingguy04]

Awesome, thanks. I will look more into rigid forks, I've found some on eBay for ~$100 but I'm a little skeptical of their quality/ability to hold up me and 20-30lbs of gear. But I'm keeping my eyes peeled for a user name brand fork.

I guess I won't know for sure til I bolt everything together but I think between my spare parts bin, eBay, and my lbs I ought to be able to get this to work.