If you store your cooler in a hot attic, shed, or garage, bring it inside at least a day before your trip. This is how we prepare our cooler before a big trip.

The day before your camping trip, there are a few things you can do to prepare your cooler for success. So if you can swing it, a two cooler system can really help your perishable food items stay colder and safer for a lot longer. A less-than-chilled beer isn’t a big deal, but lukewarm chicken is a major problem. When it comes to food safety, there is a greater margin of error for drinks than there is for food. In our opinion, the drinks cooler can be a more inexpensive model or perhaps a semi-retired older cooler. Digging underneath your food to find a cold beer at the bottom is not only a hassle but a major waste of energy. The drinks cooler is going to be opened a lot more frequently and will, therefore, warm more rapidly. Consider a two cooler systemĭepending on your group size and your budget there’s a strong argument to be made for having one cooler for food and one cooler for drinks. It’s a very competitive industry (valued at over 1 billion in the US alone) and there are a lot of very good products on the market. Yes, cooler insulation has improved, but no one brand has a complete lock on proprietary game-changing technology.

Our Take: This is the exact mistake we made! We initially bought a 35-quart cooler when we really should have gotten a 45-50 quart cooler. But you don’t want to have to cut back on food to keep the ice ratio in line. We recommend getting a cooler slightly larger than you think (you can always fill the extra space with ice). If you want a premium brand cooler, but due to sticker shock decide to opt for a smaller model, you will inevitably find yourself shortchanging the ice-and in doing so, ruin any performance advantage you might have gained. We will get into this in more detail a little later, but for optimal performance, your cooler should have an ice-to-content ratio of at least 2:1. Nobody talks about this, but properly sizing your cooler is perhaps the most important factor when it comes to cooler performance. These features can go a long way towards keeping in the cold. New coolers feature better insulating material, better construction methods, and details like freezer-style gaskets and tighter fitting lids. If you’re using one you picked up on discount years ago, you might want to consider upgrading to a newer, better-insulated model. Consider upgrading your coolerĬooler insulation has improved dramatically over the past couple of years. The first step to improving your cooler performance is to make sure you have the right cooler for your particular needs. Two of the coolers we own: a Yeti Tundra 35 and the RTIC 45QT How to select the BEST cooler (for you)

Camp rock 1 ice cream scene