Ice is the topic of many conversations and one of the most important items in your camping arsenal. It keeps the food fresh and the beer cold. It’s also an awful mess sometimes when it starts to melt. I overcame my problems of soggy food and wet bread by double bagging cubed ice in ziploc freezer bags. It takes a few minutes to just distribute the ice into 3 or 4 individual bags but make sure you double bag it to ensure there are no leaks. Now there is no water filling up the bottom of your cooler. You can pack the bags around important items like beer, your extra beer and your reserve of beer so that its always cold. If you have a preference for mixed drinks then you just have to open your nice clean bag of ice and pull out a few cubes and, when all is said and done and it’s melted, well then you have water for your coffee in the morning providing you bought purified cubes.

More notes on ice. On longer trips I used blocks of ice as I found it will last longer. In this situation just do the reverse, make sure your food is packed in the bags. Also, for the first month on the road, I was traveling with the cooler in the back of the bus so my ice would be gone by the time I was finished driving for the day. DOH! That’s where the engine is. I don’t like having anything on the floor when I’m driving but the cooler was heavy enough to stay put so I moved it under the table and eventually in between the driver and passenger seat up front.