Spring has sprung for most of the country, and here in North Carolina, that means it’s time for camping. Time to pull the tents and backpacks out of the attic, dust them off and air them out. And since Father’s Day is only a month away, it means dropping hints so that you can weigh your pack down with the coolest new camping gadgets available.
Let’s look at some great additions to any outdoors-geek’s arsenal, and some toys to help introduce kids to the art of the bivouac.
- Black Diamond Wiz Headlamps. What kid doesn’t want a headlamp? These are safe, they have an automatic shut-off to save battery power, and they come in kid-friendly color palettes. Finding your way to the toilet in the middle of the night is so much easier when your light source is hands-free.
- SolLight Water Bottle. If you’re hiking in to your campsite, you want your load to be as light as possible. Multi-taskers are key, and the SolLight Bottle has a built-in, solar-powered LED Light. It lasts for twelve hours with four hours of solar charge, which means that any geeklets that might be afraid of the dark don’t have to worry about draining the batteries in their headlamp.
- Garmin Colorado 400C Handheld GPS. It’s a little pricey, sure, but it has everything that a hiker might need in a GPS: topo maps, aerial photography, U.S. marine charts, 65K color display, compass, altimeter, thermometer, and ANT. It’s marketed to the marine crowd, but would surely come just as handy on a long hike as it would on the open sea.
- Swiss-Spice Salt and Pepper Dispenser. When we go camping, part of the fun is coming up with new and tasty recipes that can be prepared at the campfire. With a little salt and pepper (and the thrill of eating by a campfire), that freeze-dried beef stroganoff will be one of the best meals you’ve ever tasted.
- Swiss Army Knife. Say what you will about Leathermans (Leathermen?), when I was a Boy Scout, Swiss Army knives were our tools of choice. Through Father’s Day, Amazon is having a sale on Victorinox Swiss Army products. $10 off a $50 Swiss Army purchase, so get a matching pair for you and the geeklet… but only if they’ve got their Whittling Chip, of course.
What tools are in your pack? Which toys are you looking forward to trying out for the first time this Father’s Day? Leave a comment.
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