Summer is ice chest season. That means you’re loading up on bags of ice that inevitably turn to water. The hassle of soggy picnic supplies is actually an easy fix … more annoying is no ice cubes at cocktail hour.
We’ve got a solution. ice tubes. If you add these frozen PVC tubes to your cooler it will stay cold longer, there will be less mess, and you’ll have ice for your drinks.
So I headed over to Ace Hardware to pick up some 2 inch PVC pipe and end caps (2 per tube). You may find short cuts of pipe or if you ask they’ll cut one of the 8 foot lengths down. You’ll also need a can of PVC cement, hack saw, coarse grit sandpaper, a sharpie and a tape measure. These tube will soon be filled with tap water and table salt.
Start by measuring the cooler(s) to see how long the tubes need to be. The end caps will add to the overall length of the finished tube so you need to subtract this extra amount when cutting. There is also some air pressure resistance in the final capping that can add to the finish length. If you make your pipes about an inch and a half shorter than the desired length, that should work.
Measure and cut the pipe into pieces and then use some coarse grit sand paper to clean up the rough ends and rough up about an inch of the outside ends of each tube.
Using the dabber on the PVC cement spread a generous amount around the inside of the cap and fit one to the end of each of your tubes. Now let that set for a couple of hours.
You’ll need some way to stand the tubes on end … a wide mouth mason jar works. Sand all the tubes up on their capped ends and add a table spoon of salt to each tube. Fill about ¾ of the way with water. Repeat the cap sealing making sure you push the cap firmly down against the air pressure so you get a good seal. Leave them standing for a couple of hours.
Throw them in the freezer and they are ready to add to your ice chest. These ice tubes will work to keep things cold as is, but will also extend the life of any ice cubes you bring along.
I wonder if anyone remembers when getting lost didn’t involve losing cell coverage? The smart phone has become more than a communication link, it is also a navigation tool. How easy is it to just email the directions for Google and have turn by turn navigation to nearly anywhere?
Recently we added a handheld GPS to this navigation tool set and have been enjoying the planning process even more. With any GPS system you can track or set waypoints, making getting to a spot really easy. All of these resources together have made it easy to plot an escape.
Blazed by early explorers like John Fremont, a mostly two-lane road winds south out of Bend onto the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains. This nearly 100 mile stretch started out as a dirt trail linking the city to a southern route over those rugged peaks. It’s those peaks that draw most of the traffic these days.
Soda Creek Campground caught our attention this trip. Only ten sites but all with views across the meadow.
Summer camping got into full swing this week. We are doing short one and two day trips to fine tune the systems in our Eurovan camper. We will eventually do longer trips but for now we are working out kinks.
