A buddy of mine and I are looking at doing more camping trips soon. So I've been looking into some coolers. I've seen yeti and don't quite have the pockets for that. I need something I can use to hold my dog's food (one husky and I feed her on a raw meat diet usually a pound and a half a day) so I'm wondering what coolers people are using withing a reasonable price that can hold ice for 4 or 5 days. I was looking into gator box coolers or Engel coolers but I don't see much info on the gator box one. Any suggestions would be dope. Thanks guys!
I have a couple RTIC coolers (1 soft sided and 1 rotomolded) and while I really don't have anything to compare the to, I really like them. We use the soft sided more often than the solid one and it holds ice nicely over the weekend setting in a hot car during baseball tournaments.
I wanted good durability without the price and this one has it. Nice handles and metal hinges. It kept our food/drinks & two bags of ice, cold all day. Only had about a cup of water in the bottom after the first day.
You might consider a cooler like FattyMcJ or guptonr suggests and if you don't feel it will do an adequate job of keeping Fidos meat from spoiling, you can get a small 12V. refrigerator that should hold 7 1/2 lbs. of meat safely. You could freeze days 3,4 & 5 portions so that the cooler or fridge won't have to work as hard.
If you're roughing it why not feed Fido the dry shit. She'll eat it if she gets hungry enough.
I've got a large Igloo Max Cold. It's supposed to be rated for 5 days, but I haven't gotten that kind of time here in Texas in the summer.
There are a lot of techniques to make any cooler work better. 5 days is a long time.
Use block ice (or make your own - frozen gallon jugs)
Freezing the meat ahead of time as recommended above
Pre-chill the cooler
Don't put any warm items in there
There's a ton of suggestions if you search around.
To expand on this a common suggestion is to get two smaller coolers rather than one big one.
One cooler will hold your perishables and raw meats and one will hold the drinks and other non-perishable items. That way the meat cooler is rarely opened (3x a day) and will keep the perishable items colder/safer longer :thumb:
Heck, with that you could invest in something like a 20qt roto cooler to hold ice very long for the meats and then a regular cheaper cooler for the drinks.
Thanks everyone. I saw the YouTube video with the cooler comparisons. Gave me a lot to check out. I do like the idea of two smaller coolers so I'll check that out. As for dry food for my dog, her not eating is what made me switch. I.own a husky and we're very active, 5 mile morning runs, beach trips, hiking etc I switched her from dry because she would go a week without eating. Any dried food she didn't like it. As soon as I switched to raw she was eating as expected, gained weight back, was more energetic and all around healthier.
Great video review, thanks for posting. I have a Pelican and very happy with it's performance. #madeinamerica. Bought it from Zoro Tools where I get 25% off discount codes periodically in my inbox.
I have a pelican but they are pricey. A buddy of mine got a gander mountain brand one and says it works fantastic. Gander mountain is going out of business soon so might be a good time to pick one up there on sale too if you got one nearby.
I love my Yeti Tundra 50. It has kept ice on two occasions for 7 full days. two years ago on the Rubicon trail and last year on the Dusy Ershim. I filled with ice when I headed out and still had ice when I got home. the last two weekends I used it and camped for 3 days each time and never had an issue with keeping ice. The secret is to precool and also to keep the lid shut tight the whole time. My buddy who I did both trips with has the same cooler and everytime I would look his lid would be open and he complained that his ice did not last long. I would freeze meat and keep it at the bottom of the cooler in zip lock bags and it would stay frozen most of the trip. I do one block of ice and one bag of cubes.
Two coolers, using one just to hold additional ice. Put a couple blocks of dry ice in that one along with your bags of regular ice.
You'll rarely have to open the cooler full of ice to restock the other one.
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