Summer Road Trips: What Worked Well

Labor Day has passed in the USA and for all intents and purposes, summer is over for those of us with kids.  While the weather outside is still enjoyable, the nights are turning a bit nippy and some days start with a cloud cover in Puget Sound.  All of this means it’s a good time for me to look back at the road trips this summer and inventory what worked well.  I’ll save the “Wow, that was a bad idea” topics for another post. 🙂

Engel Freezer/Fridge

If you want to get serious about your cold food storage while on the road, take a look at Engel’s line of portable freezer/fridges.  There are many brands out on the market and I’m sure others do a fine job.  For me, though, this fridge has managed over 300 miles offroad, 5000 miles on road and a number of backyard BBQs.  After using a cooler on the Chicago TBEX road trip, I was reminded why I like this fridge so much.  It pulls less than 2amps and can freeze food if you like.  The 40qt. version I have is enough for a week’s worth of salad and milk (and bacon!!) and won’t kill your battery when left running.

The compressor motor is suspended making it ideal for bumpy offroad trips and a number of my friends swear by this fridge.  Running on both AC or DC, the fridge makes an excellent backup for a patio party or even, as has happened to us a number of times, when the power goes out.  We took this fridge with us to Oregon’s Hells Canyon National Recreation Area as well as the Washington’s Olympic National Park and it can handle cooling contents to any steady temperature you like regardless of the outside temps (I’ve personally had the fridge set at 35F while the outside temps were 110F!).  The optional temperature gauge is a handy purchase if you grab one of these fridges.

VW Routan Minivan

I first wrote about the virtues of the VW Routan Minivan on the TBEX Road Trip blog.  I’m not much of a minivan fan, I’ll admit.  They just aren’t my style, which is usually something that goes offroad well or sports cars.  But I’m also not a guy who will pass up an opportunity to try something new, so when VW mentioned they’d like to lend us a Routan for our Seattle to Chicago road trip, I was excited but still skeptical.  One important part, for me, about accepting such a large item to test out was my need to be 100% honest in my feedback to VW and what I post on the internet.  To which they said “Of course!”

After eight days on the road I came to realize just how handy a minivan can be on a road trip.  The Routan was spacious while not being impossible to store and retrieve items (like my Suburban can be at times).  We had the base model but the engine still had my requirement of needed pep to merge on the freeways with 75MPH speed limits.  Visibility was awesome (again, I’m comparing it to a Suburban or a Land Rover Defender) and I enjoyed the ride height.  Trunk storage was enough for our camping gear plus clothes bags (we all travel light, though) and a camera bag or two.  One seemingly minor feature I really enjoyed while being the driver was the push button sliding side doors, on both sides.   When I wanted to jump out and take a picture, I’d hit a button and the door behind me would side open allowing me to grab my camera (the center console was already clogged with our other techy gadgets).  It seems like a small thing, but for me it was a luxury that is nice to have as a standard feature.

There were couple of needed refinements.  We all found the driver’s seat (only) to be uncomfortable after a few hours.  Various positions and supplemental back supports didn’t help much.  I’m not exactly sure what it was, but for me, at 6’1″, the head rest certainly wasn’t helping matters.  I did notice the upgraded models had a slightly different seat.  Also, the Routan didn’t measure up to its stated Mile Per Gallon (MPG) rating.  The best we could squeak out was 22MPG on the freeway.

Would I take a VW Routan on another road trip?  Heck yeah!!  Except the two minor things mentioned above, the minivan was a breeze to operate, relax in (the middle row bucket seats fully recline), pack and unpack, and in which to spend eight days getting to know new friends.

Canon Rebel T1i Digital SLR Camera

I bought the Canon T1i DSLR kit (includes 18-55mm lens) from Amazon just before the first of my road trips this summer.  It was something of an impulse buy and not well rationalized.  I was being sent a lens to test and needed a camera.  I know, not the most sane reason, but I’ve also wanted a lightweight camera to take on family trips when my Canon 5D with 28-300mm lens 9lbs wonder camera was overkill.

The first thing I loved about the camera was indeed the weight.  It’s light while still being comfortable in my big hands.  I can also hand it to my 7 year old daughter and it’s just the right size for her to use.  The picture quality is what I’d expect in this line of Canon cameras; excellent.  You may then be wondering why I wouldn’t just stick with this camera and not use something more expensive like the 5D?  While the images out of this camera are wonderful and very usable as prints, the 5D is just made stronger.  It’s built to take more punishment and has simplified controls (such as a lack of ‘auto’ modes).  I have a feeling if I gave the T1i the beating I’ve given the 5D, it wouldn’t hold up as well.  But the punishing professional is not its realm, being small, light and taking video is!

Two features I really enjoyed during the road trips were the sensor cleaner and video modes.  I won’t bore you with rattling off the stats and benchmark tests.  You can find all of that over at DPReview.com, they do a great job.  What I can tell you is what a Godsend the sensor cleaner is.  I’ve fought for almost my entire digital SLR life with dust on the sensor.  Little bits here and there and it takes up time in post processing to remove them.  But now more and more DSLRs are putting in a little shaker device in front of the sensor, kinda like a high tech lint screen, the activates whenever the camera is turned off.  It does a fabulous job and after all those miles on the road, I still don’t have any dust on my sensor.  Whereas, with the 5D, I’ve cleaned it 3 times and it still needs more cleaning.  Sensor cleaning dohickey=Wonderous!

The video mode is pretty cool as well.  It means one less gadget I have to bring and it does a respectable job.  It’ll shoot in HD but only at 20 frames per second (fps).  This is ok for slower stuff, but when taping fast action, the different frame rate is noticeable.  In 780i mode, which runs at 30fps (what most of us are used to viewing, more or less), the quality is wonderful and color renditions are accurate.  It works best in bright light but is passable in lower light.  I wish it had a avi option instead of just recording only in MOV (which I usually have to convert to upload) and stereo microphones would be a plus.  Also, be careful when zooming or focusing as the microphone WILL pick up the sound of the focus motor.  Oh yeah, and turn off image stabilizing if your lens has it, as it’ll cause a ‘jump’ in the image when it shuts off while taping.

I’ll have another post soon on what didn’t work this summer and some more tips on the techy gadgets that made staying online work well.