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How to keep Cooler Cold for Camping
Are you worried about buying additional and extra bags of ice for your coolers during camping? Well, we believe that almost every camper hates it to the core. Therefore, people are looking for alternate ways of keeping their cooler cold for camping. It comes as one of the toughest jobs as a camper because there are tons of problems already waiting for you, when you decide to camp, especially in summers.
Besides keeping your cooler cold, you have to take care of a lot of other things as well. Good campers always prepare themselves completely before a trip. It is highly advisable to maintain a proper gear and equipment in order to avoid any inconvenience during your trip as a camper.
As far as keeping your cooler cold for camping is concerned, there are several ways practiced by tourists and campers around the globe. We’ve also brought you a list of some effective ways that can help you in keeping your cooler cold for camping.
For More Camping Guidelines: How To Pitch A Tent In The Rain
With the help of these tricks, we can assure you that you’d save a lot of money and time because they’re simple and easily executable. Let’s get into the list of the top best ways to keep your cooler cold for camping.
Top Best ways to keep cooler cold for camping in 2021
High-performance coolers:
First of all, you are going to need a high-end cooler with top-notch performance. It is going to cost you a couple of bucks, however; they truly deserve your money. A good cooler will give you durability and keep your drinks and water cold for at least 10 days. It is extremely important that you invest in high-quality coolers as it gives you the luxury of not buying another for a couple of years.
Cheap coolers are extremely vulnerable and there is a huge possibility of them fading away after a few camping trips. YETI, RTIC, Pelican, Engel and Grizzly are some of the names that you can consider buying when we talk about high-performance coolers.
Using an Ice-block:
If you keep a decent block of ice inside your cooler then there are high chances of it remaining cold for a good amount of time. Don’t let the fancy ice cubes fool you because they’re being sold everywhere without any productive effect. A huge ice block will have less air-contact and therefore; there are less chances of melting.
Ice cubes are only good enough for a glass of apple juice. Creating an ice block at home is quite easy. All you have to do is to put some water in a container and cover it up with a lid.
Place it inside the deep-freezer and you will have a nice block of ice ready in a couple of hours. Although, the ice block getting its final shape largely depends on the temperature and performance of your fridge/freezer.
Use bottle water Ice:
Replacing the block ice with several frozen water bottles is always a good idea. There are a lot of people who don’t like to drink the melted ice water for various reasons. Just collect some plastic bottles, fill them up and freeze them before you leave on your journey. Also, there are quite a few advantages of using bottles of frozen water.
Firstly, you can always re-use it when needed. You will have an emergency water supply available. They are also quite easy to prepare at home and most importantly, they will save your food from getting wet inside the cooler and floating on water.
Using dry ice:
Besides keeping your cooler really colder and a great period of time, there is a slight drawback as well of using dry ice. As you know, it contains carbon dioxide (CO2) gas that can potentially affect your health.
However, if you’re still willing to use dry ice then there are a couple of things that need to be followed precisely. Firstly, use gloves when holding dry ice because it can burn your hands. Putting the cooler in a spacious area is equally important because you need the CO2 gas to be reduced.
There is another healthy way of doing it as well. You can put the dry ice and normal ice in a cooler together, at the same time. It is a brilliant idea because it keeps the block ice out of melting longer. Also, we need to make it absolutely clear that dry ice will produce a lot of CO2 gas inside the cooler.
Therefore, we can expect your cooler to burst open at the lid. There is absolutely no need to worry because these sort of incidents happen rarely. We also need to mention it clearly that opening and closing the lid of your cooler will reduce the CO2 inside. Ideally, we would recommend 30 pounds of dry ice for 60qt cooler.
Dry Ice vs. Block Ice vs. Cubed Ice vs. Bottle Water Ice:
There is absolutely no need to bring ice cubes because they don’t help in keeping your cooler cold for camping. However, if you’re getting the cubes to fill your favorite drinks then, we don’t see any problem in bringing the ice cubes along.
Block ice is a magnificent trick and it takes more time to melt than ice cubes. There is also an outside chance of making it by yourself.
Bottle water ice is also a good idea as far as keeping your cooler cold for camping is concerned. However, there is a huge risk of your food getting soggy.
On the other hand, if you look at the dry ice trick it keeps food fresh for a longer period of time and there is no problem of water leakage whatsoever. Still, with a lot of CO2 around, you need to be extra careful in order to avoid an unpleasant event.
Conclusion:
In the end, there are few tips that we want to share. Firstly, you need to pre-freeze everything before putting them in the cooler. Don’t open the lid of the cooler frequently and wet food should always be packed in plastic containers or zip lock bags.
We truly hope that this guide was of a lot of help for you. Try out these tricks at home before going out for camping. We are more than sure that these effective tricks will help you keep your cooler cold for camping. See you soon in our next informative guide. Until then, good bye and good luck with your camping trips.