What is the best way to pack a cooler? I have a few coolers, one will be for drinks that us and the kids. The second one is for our meals. The food is hard to find, some get soggy in the bottom water, we always end up with thawed foods that we didn't eat. There has to be a better way. We had ketchup filled with water on one trip last year.
Great post, I can't wait to hear the answers. I've never had anything get water in it that was shut correctly, but I'm not camping with kids. I'm trying the 'drinks in a different cooler than food' this weekend. When you only have two people it feels weird to bring two coolers, but I'm goin' for it.
We find that prepping the cooler can make all the difference in the world.
2 days before a trip, we put a single layer of ice on the bottom of the cooler, just enough to cover the bottom and close it up. This brings the temp of the walls of the cooler down to temp and conditions the inside.
On packing day, we dump that out and put a 1 inch layer of ice on the bottom.. EVERYTHING that goes in the cooler gets placed inside a Freezer ziplock bags, not the general purpose ones, the FREEZER type (They generally have double seals. Using gallon bags, we can usually put 3 or 4 items in the bag. As many items as possible are put in frozen, it only takes a few hours to thaw any meat for dinner. When fully packed, we put ice on the top later to fill the cooler. Cold falls down to the bottom.
With this method, things stay very cold for days. We save/reuse the ziplock bags.
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[quote author=kitphantom link=topic=1564.msg12622#msg12622 date=1334614421]
We have tried block ice a few times, but always go back to cube or crushed ice, things seem to stay colder when sunk in a combination of ice and some water
You don't have to choose. We use both blocks and cubes. The cubes allow you to sink items into the ice water. But a gallon jug of ice ensures that the ice lasts for the maximum number of days.
One thing that we tried this past weekend was putting a shelf in the cooler. This keeps some items out of the ice so they don't get water logged. We haven't found one that fits perfect yet, but the current one is only about 1/4" too small so I may be able to force it into place.
To get the maximum life out of that ice, keep the cooler in the shade and limit the number of times it is opened. And like I said above, a big block of ice lasts MUCH longer than a bunch of ice cubes.
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