After Vacation Update to Dehydrated Food and the YETI

I should probably get around to updating from our last vacation before our next vacation. I currently need to finish our taxes, get caught up on some treasurer duties for an organization I belong to, and I’m a little behind in work. What better time to get caught up on blogging than when I have a list of things I don’t want to deal with!

Last summer we were in need of a cooler upgrade and tested out several coolers. If you are interested in that post you can read about it here. We ended up with a YETI and LOVE it. I can’t tell you how many people have rolled their eyes or made snide comments about spending so much on a cooler, but we don’t care. The cooler is worth the money so far. It’s heavier than I’d like but other than that, I have no complaints. We live out of our cooler for one to two weeks at a time on a regular basis. If we were weekend campers we wouldn’t have purchased a YETI.

Last summer we visited Southwestern Colorado and were gone nine days. We used a total of six bags of ice over the nine days. Our previous cooler took two bags of ice per day which means we would have had to purchase 12 additional bags of ice over the nine days. We paid $320 for our cooler and saved $36 purchasing the 12 additional bags of ice. The YETI is down to $284.

Additionally, we didn’t throw any food away because it was waterlogged. That is something that happened to us regularly and is such a waste of food and money.

What we found is that the YETI is so well insulated that it stays cool like a fridge. We keep a layer of ice at the bottom to retain the cold but it’s not necessary to cover everything in ice. In our previous cooler items only stayed cold if they were surrounded by ice. And when replacing two bags of ice per day, that’s a lot of water to constantly be keeping out of food.

The other big win for us was taking along dehydrated food. We took several bags of dehydrated ground beef and dehydrated spaghetti sauce. The only meat we had to buy fresh was chicken. What was fun about having dehydrated meals is that it gave us more flexibility around what we ate. If we didn’t want spaghetti or tacos one night we were able to eat something else without wasting the food. Dehydrated food is not something I want to eat every night but it sure tastes good after a long day of outdoor activities. We will continue to incorporate dehydrated food into future long trips.

I took zero pictures of our cooler or dehydrated food on this trip. I guess I was too busy having fun to think about blogging. The only picture I could find with food is this one. That’s my bowl of rehydrated spaghetti on the foot stool. This also happens to be one of my favorite campsites with two of my favorite people. We had a truly wonderful time around the campfire that night.