Top 10 Camping Gadgets for Geeks

In our family, summertime is all about being in the woods and camping.  There is nothing better than packing up our hummer with our equipment and our dogs and starting the beautiful two hour drive into the North Georgia Mountains.  Since my husband and I are both geeks at heart, I think we own every possible geek gadget made for camping.We wrote this very special article together.  The items listed below may not be the coolest, they may not be the most essential, but they are definitely the geekiest camping gadgets we could find. Enjoy!

When camping, most people bag their food and hang it in a tree, high enough to keep bears from reaching it, but not geeks.  Geeks prefer the BearVault Food Container.  This container keeps the odor, food and toiletries hidden from bears.  I wish they made a BearVault Human Container big enough to sleep in.

When most people get lost in the woods, they try to survive and hope that someone eventually finds them, but not a true geek.  A geek equips himself with a Personal Locator Beacon with GPS at all times while hiking in the woods.  Once activated, the antenna sends your coordinates for your exact position.  This gadget can really add camping self confidence to any geek.

Forget drugstore flashlights, this is a flashlight from Black Bear Flashlights that will make all geeks excited.  This is one of the most powerful flashlights in the world.  It is so bright, it will catch a piece of paper on fire.  You read correctly, you can start a fire with this thing!  This mac daddy of all flashlights is a must for every geek.

Every real camper knows that beer is an important part of the trip.  Why fill an ordinary cooler with ice when you can take a Tote-A-Keg Portable Draught System?  This portable keg  holds two cases of beer.  This picture says a thousand words.  Next time you go camping with your buddies, bring this and become the instant hero.

This next recommendation is so geeky, it is almost too geeky to write about.  I affectionately call this product the Super Geek Watch.  In addition to recording the time, this watch is also an altimeter, a barometer, a compass and, and according to www.rei.com, it also “delivers crucial data for gauging performance, direction and weather.  The weather trend indicator shows history over the last 3 – 6 hours.”  Now if that’s not geeky, I don’t know what is.  This watch even comes complete with a storm alarm feature.

A proper camping trip is not complete without binoculars.  The RXB-IV Digital Laser Range Finding Binoculars are a must for all geeks.  These binoculars are not regular binoculars, they are super binoculars.  They provide 9x magnification and have a built in inclinometer.  They even has a laser that bounces off the object you are looking at and tells you how far away it is.  I know, that is so cool.

One thing that important to me when camping is to still have hot coffee in the morning.  Most people do without coffee when camping, or try to heat it on the fire.  A true geek will never sacrifice life’s small pleasures, he will figure it out and make it happen.  Coleman makes an awesome coffee pot that allows you to make your own coffee without electricity!  You just set this coffee pot on a two burner camping store and voila, delicious coffee.  We have this coffee pot and consider it one of our favorite pieces of camping equipment.

We all love music, and what is more appropriate for a camping trip than a solar-powered wind up radio?  We bought ours over ten years ago and it still works perfectly.  www.campingsurvival.com even offers a solar powered radio that doubles as a flashlight, a compass, a thermometer, a siren and a clock.  What is geekier than that?

What do geeks have more than anyone else?  Geeky stuff.  If you are like us, you want to bring all of your electronics with you when you camp.  Obviously you won’t want to rely on your car to charge all of your super cool stuff, so what’s a geek to do?  Bring a generator, of course!  The EU1000iA generator weighs only 29 pounds, is fuel efficient, super quiet and perfect for anytime you want to charge up all your geeky goodies.

And, of course, you know we saved the best for last.  Every geek needs the 8 iPhone Apps for camping.  These apps include:  TrailBehind, Park Maps, Knot Guide, Knot Time, Flashlight, Motion-X GPS Lite, Anti Mosquito and Accuweather.  All you iPhone fans, I know you’ll have a blast with this!

There are many other geeky products that didn’t make this list, but deserve an honorable mention like the handheld GPS, water purification systems, and the Jetboil Personal Cooking System.

Oh, and one more camping tidbit, I read this week that the best mosquito repellent is Listerine mouthwash.  Yes, that mouthwash in your bathroom, when slathered on your arms and legs, keeps mosquitos away better than any other product on the market.  I’ll be trying that next time we head out into the woods!

Happy Trails!