Gear Archives - Sweet Southern Savings

Seek Out Your Camping Oasis

The first step to planning your camping trip is to find a campsite. Sites can be anywhere and there might even be some close to your home. Depending on what you are looking for, there are national parks, state parks and privately owned sites that you can rent from. Tent sites are your most cost-effective and require the least amount of equipment to purchase.

Find a Tent

If you are taking your family camping, you’re going to need some shelter. The biggest bang for your buck is going to be buying a tent, and this is something you can probably use for years. Tents are not terribly expensive, and you can often find discount coupons to take to the store with you when you purchase. Buying a decent tent will take you on many camping trips for years to come.

A Sleeping Surface

Now that you have a tent, you need to consider getting a sleeping bag and ground cover to sleep on. Depending on the time of year, and the average outdoor temperatures, you may not need an overly expensive sleeping bag. Also, buy yourself some foam pads to place on the ground to sleep on top of to help ensure a good night’s rest.

Accessories

Now that you have your shelter and sleeping surfaces settled, it’s time to find your camping accessories. Raid your garage for your folding chairs to use while sitting by the fire. Gather a few boxes of matches and some old newspaper to use as fire starter. Go through the basement and take out your mismatched dishes and cutlery as you don’t want to bring your best stuff. Put together some old pots and pans as well to prepare your food in over the fire (or if you are feeling really fancy, you can buy a portable camping stove that runs on propane). After that is settled, search the internet for some great camping recipes that are easy to prepare and require minimal ingredients and spices. Purchase yourself a decent cooler to keep your cold items cool for your trip, and ensure it has a good lock on it to keep out the wildlife.

20 Liter Premium Dry Bag with Clear Plastic Panel by ForlifeStore:

20L dry bag backpack is big enough to carry everything you need for a day trip. Suitable for protecting clothes, shoes, tablet PC, bath towel, flashlight, telescope, hand tools, notebook, food container etc.
Two padded shoulder straps allow for convenient and easy carrying as a backpack style.
Dimension: 9.3 × 23.7 in (Diameter x High) – Weight: 17.6 oz
To ensure it is waterproof, you could do a small test in the water before using the bag.
Please Note: It is not designed to be fully submerged under the water.

Want you will get when your dry bag arrives:

Premium dry bag
Bonus waterproof case
Two padded shoulder straps
Durable PVC package

A Dry Bag That Is Competent For Crucial Containment

Lately, we have been experimenting and testing this 20 Liter Waterproof “Dry Bag” from ForlifeStore. This company is new to us and yet it was founded in 1989. That’s a long time with our current here today and gone tomorrow business environment. We have several dry bags as we know the value of having a competent weatherproof place to stow our vulnerable gear. If you’re like us you will have important items that you will need to keep dry. Like clothes and survival necessities; GPS, fire starter, maps, compass, etc. At 20 liters this bag has ample size to accommodate all the vital equipment that we need. But before heading out with our gear, testing of this dry bag needed to be done first.

For the sake of science, we used newspaper in place of our precious cargo for testing. It’s a great moisture indicator and much cheaper than our sensitive gear to replace. After loading and properly sealing the opening, it was test time. We left the newspaper laden bag sitting by a tree with inclement weather coming. Living in the south with high heat, humidity, and torrential rainfall that pops up without warning a dry bag must be able to survive a summer thunderstorm to be useful here. We are pleased to report that after three solid days of rainfall that we found no sign of water permeating the ForlifeStore bag. The newspaper was as dry as the day it went in. We now feel confident exposing this dry bag to the extreme environments we will subject it to while camping, rafting, and exploring.

This bag has a couple of features we both really like and none of our other bags offer. The first is the clear window that the bag has down its side. Great for visually inspecting and locating its contents without having to open the bag and dig through it. Especially, nice when it’s raining and you need to retrieve something. The next feature that the shorter of the two of us really likes is the two padded straps that came with it. These removable and well-constructed straps allow the taller of us to carry the sometimes heavy payload of the shorter one. Last but not least is the clear waterproof pouch that was included. Perfect for an extra layer of protection for our water sensitive electronics. We are very pleased with everything that we received and found that overall, this product delivers what it promised and walks its talk with confidence.