Back in 1991 I bought an EverReady convertible flashlight/lantern which has been with me on every trip since (in the linked picture mine is the small one on the right). It has served me well over the years, and has been one of the most useful pieces of gear I’ve ever bought. These days I mostly take it along as a kind of rabbit’s foot. The silver is coming off the reflector and the battery compartment is getting fussy, so I’m afraid one day I won’t be able to get it open to replace the batteries without it breaking. I would have gotten another one a long time ago, but for some reason nobody was making anything like it for awhile. It went from being able to see them in every sporting goods department and hardware store to not even being able to find this style of lantern on the InterWebs.
But the new generation of led battery lighting has made for some really nifty, compact new designs. I found Kelty’s Flashback Mini Lantern and decided this was the one to take over from good ol’ EverReady.
It has an anodized aluminum body, available in black, green or yellow (I picked green), rubberized trim, and a solid, well-machined feel. It is very compact, taking up much less room than what it is replacing. Three intensity settings and a flashing mode plus a bail for hanging make this a really neat little light. It feels like a precision instrument, solid in the hand and smooth to operate, changing from a flashlight to area lantern with a quick pull. It’s a bit pricey, but with care it should last many years. I used a good discount that I had available when I bought it from L.L. Bean, which kept the price down. You might want to watch for sales or use a discount program if you decide to buy one.
And speaking of L.L. Bean, it was one of the few places I could find a decent warm-weather sleeping bag. My down bag is overkill for this trip, where hot, humid weather is going to be the challenge. I still want to have adequate bedding for chilly desert nights or unseasonably cool weather, but I needed something less arctic than the down bag. L.L. Bean’s Sportsman’s XL 40-degree bag fills the bill. It’s roomy, has an actual cotton flannel liner (hard to find these days), and a tough outer shell. Like all rectangular bags, it will unzip to make a decent comforter over a camp or RV bed. It should last for many years, unlike the crappy low-end models that were all I could find at local retailers. It was more than I’d planned to spend, but I’m not seeing the cheap-but-serviceable summer bags I used to find. The cheap bags aren’t so cheap anymore, and they are beyond awful with shoddy workmanship and scratchy, pill-prone linings. This one is much better, and seems hefty enough to be useful in a wide variety of temps.
For coffee, I knew I wanted something very compact and lightweight for this trip. That ruled out my GSI press pot, and even the little stove top espresso makers. After much experimentation with camp coffee making, I’ve decided the best tasting coffee probably comes from a simple drip cone. These are less bulky than press pots, and are much easier to clean. Cleaning a press pot in camp is a bummer chore, there’s no super quick, mess-free way to do it. I’ll keep my press pot, but I want to try something new.
GSI makes a fantastic collapsible silicone coffee cone that snaps down an inch high and comes with its own little lid. It’s called the Java Drip, and it will accommodate a variety of paper cone sizes. It calls for size 4 filters (whatever that is), but you could use any size paper filter they make in this thing. Small ones drop in, large ones can just be gently pressed in and formed. (Trust me, I do it all the time at home with filters that aren’t made to fit my at-home dripper basket.) The Java Drip sits comfortably on a mug or wide mouth container for brewing. Takes up almost no space when folded down. When deployed it is large enough to brew a huge pot of coffee, but works just as well for a single cup. Just adjust how much coffee you use. One reviewer claimed the silicone messed with the taste of the coffee, but I didn’t notice that at all. Silicone will tend to absorb odors more than hard plastic, so I probably wouldn’t use this every day at home, but for camp and travel, I think this thing is perfect.
Later I’ll talk about what I’m using for GPS navigation.
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