Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Top Shelf: the high-tech guide to camping and the great outdoors”.
Welcome to top shelf my name is David Pierce, and this week it seems, like everyone I know, is out on vacation everyone’s out in the woods somewhere, pitching tents and roasting hot dogs. So we figured we’d talk about camping, but instead of doing our research and talking to people and bringing everybody into studio, we figured what the hell. Let’S go camping step, one unload all your crap, it’s a lot of work, but it’s a lot of fun and in the midst of it, you’re, probably not thinking about the tent poles you left in the garage or that parked acceding bag. That will probably keep you just a little too toasty having the right gear, isn’t necessarily what camping is about, but it can make your life a lot easier. Evan Rogers took a pretty traditional approach to packet. I brought a regular tent pole from REI and a pretty heavy sleeping bag from a big-box retailer. I brought a light sleeping bag.
An inflatable tent called the cave by a German company called Heim planet and a self popping tent called well the pop-up tent. Why do they need more than one tent that doesn’t matter? What matters is that it took almost no time for me to set up camp. I can’t say the same about my tent. It was a nice one-man pole tent, but the directions were a little cryptic and we had that.
One missing piece left over the ceiling sagged a little bit and I think that’s probably why it’s a good thing: it didn’t rain, that’s it! My bag was well warm. I’M pretty sure I made the right choice: choosing light sleeping bags for summer they’re, smaller, lighter and a lot easier to carry than winter sleeping bags. Now for that tent, the cave, that thing was cool. It has these inflatable geometric support braces that make it look kind of like a spider. All you have to do is plug in the pump and pump it up. However, it wasn’t quite as easy to set up as it should have been. The tent has these air valves around the base, which are kind of tough to spot when the tent is deflated and if you miss one, you just pump forever and never get anywhere. But after I found and closed all of them, the tent went up with just a few pumps, so the first time might be a little tough. But once you know what you’re doing the cave is a great tent and an auto base. Since it’s about $ 750, then there was the pop-up tent.
It went up just as described you basically toss it like a frisbee into the air, and it has these flexible braces that pop it into shape. That part was I’ll, admit a little anticlimactic, but it was up and ready to go in one minute flat. Of course, I gave all that time back trying to take the tent down the next day. It’S almost impossible to fold back up and get back into its back. The dome took a long time to take down.
It takes a while to fully deflate, and it’s made of this thick stiff polyester. That makes it really hard to fold. So these aren’t tents that you typically take hiking or backpacking.
My intent was a little better suited today it wasn’t very fancy and it took a hot minute to set up the super light and collapses into a very small footprint. Mine was super straightforward, not particularly easy or trying to be really obvious, putting things back in the bag, sticking them back together. It took a little longer to set up, though I think I was broken down and ready to go away before David had anything put away anyway. It all depends on what you need if you’re taking a weekend, camping trip and you’re, leaving your tent back at your campsite.
Much of the time, larger tents that are easy to set up are probably just what you’re looking for, but if you’re covering a lot of distance or putting up your tent and breaking it down every day, if something lighter makes a lot more sense, I just wish I’D brought better shoes, okay, so we’re settled now: we’ve finally got our tents working weights and dinner. We explored, we finally figured out how to build a fire, and so now I want to figure out like what else is cool about high-tech camping, so Evan Rogers camper to the stars. I don’t know if that means camper extraordinaire, maybe that you yeah yeah, so you’re you’re a camper like this is your thing. You know every the whole time we’ve been here, you’ve been like well when you can’t for real.
This is how you actually do it you’re. So, like tell you, what’s your camping situation, tell me about it. I mean the camping situation. Is you only want to take as much as you need, because taking a bunch of extra stuff doesn’t always help right, but sometimes it makes your life a lot easier.
So we have the nice luxury this time of like not really having to hike so much, we just sort of drove and then unpacked and now here we are Yeah right, which is nice. It’S a good way to camp yeah. My family always used to like hike through places, and this seems much easier. Yes, it’s all the camping and none of the like actual yeah. Yes, no sweating, you don’t wan na do that yeah.
So what would you bring? So it’s like? You need a tent. Obviously any idea, I guess, is like the smallest possible for all of these things. Yes and a sleeping bag yep the ends, I guess well, I’m eating food.
Give me food, you need some beverages, you need just various accessories, but having a good, backpack yeah having good pair of shoes clean socks, clean socks are precious. You think you know, even if you’re going for like three days, maybe have like six days of socks, because you never know just because there’s really nothing worse than a soggy pair of soft. That’S fair yeah take in life just in general, oh yeah, absolutely! But so here so we had some like deeply unnecessary, but also awesomely high-tech gadgets. Yes, so, and we got to play with a bunch so like what’s what’s cool, what have you liked? What what makes it into the Evan Rogers repertoire here? Well, the first thing that I really have enjoyed using is the bio light camp stove yeah and it’s really complex when we cooked on.
We made our whole dinner on this tiny little stone yeah. It’S it’s super compact. It’S really light it’s like $ 129. So it’s not terribly expensive, but it has an attachment on it that blows into the chamber where the fire is, and it uses that to like stoke up the fire so that you can cook things on it really easily and like really quickly, and it also charges Your cell phone or any other USB gadget, so you might have yeah it just uses the fire yeah right, yeah like that’s, where you don’t need to charge it at all. It charges itself it’s totally self-sufficient.
All you have to do is get some twigs and sticks and put them in there and you’ve got power and dinner, and this company has like a crazy backstory to it. Right they’ve been doing stuff like this, and they do it make a bunch of other cool products. Yes, they they’ve been developing the bio light stove for for a long long time and they have a.
They have some other products that they’re testing out in developing markets. To really like improve the quality of life of people that don’t have all the modern accoutrements that we have right, so I mean their hearts are absolutely in the right place and the bio like camp stove is solid products. Well, this thing would think it blew my mind.
It’S like the thing is like this big around and you just drop a bunch of twigs in I kept waiting for like the extra step, the thing that would make this more complicated, but there just isn’t one you just light it, and then it just goes forever. Yeah, it’s it’s burning over there right now. It’S it just won’t, stop burning yeah and it’s really it’s really safe.
It stays really cool on the outside. So, like you can pick it up. If you have to and move it it’s it’s I mean it looks nice yeah, it’s great yeah. So what other cooking stuff is is useful.
We have, I have a titanium spork that we picked up. I was just gon na say. I think the most important thing is sports. Yes, that is the single best camping invention, take two things, turn them into one camping gold right and it’s on tape. It’S really strong. It’S got kind of like a good cutting edge on the side and it’s really easy to clean because titanium so yeah total win in my book.
Okay, so can I tell you my favorite thing? This is deeply. This is what we’re veering way into the you. Certainly, don’t need this for camping, but I think it’s really. Yes, yes, so I for me, it’s cameras and – and I found two that I think are really awesome and one I know you just discovered one is the rx100 mark yeah.
That thing is crazy. Insane this fire is crazy. Well, yeah, there’s that, but it’s it’s like the best pocket camera ever it’s insane bringing it actually fits in your pocket right and I’m just bringing a fat DSLR on trips like this, because I want good pictures. That’S the point of going on a trip.
If you don’t take pictures right and everyone sees it and is jealous of your trip right, why even go, but so that’s awesome, it’s so small, but the pictures that actually come out of it are insane. My family’s. I handed this to. I was like it’s great and you did not believe me at all.
I mean yeah and then given this, would you believe it? But it’s the pictures, look phenomenal out of it. I mean it’s got like it doesn’t have the best bokeh in the world, but I mean it has an approachable bokeh for like a point-and-shoot camera like it’s a city, otherwise brought giant DSLRs yeah 11 times the size of this camera. I mean it actually fits in the pocket, which is insane yeah. Lorena’S watch tell me that’s what yes, oh yes, this Garmin Phoenix, it’s a huge huge watch, but it is.
It is a single Randy. Jackson, yes, looks like a Randy Jackson watch. It really is, except for it has a ton of features. It’S got a fully functional GPS on it.
It’S got tons of points of interest that you can just look up on the watch. The battery lasts for pretty good, while, while you have the GPS on – and the big thing is, is that you can set a waypoint wherever you are so like fruit, this campsite, for example, and if we go hiking and you know we may get lost, we got That freedom yeah, that’s awesome. It’S really interesting! Ok, so I’m going back to the realm of utterly unnecessary things that are still really cool hit me. So this thing is a headlamp. It’S a lamp that you wear in your head very exciting, but what this is is there’s all sorts of unbelievable technology in this thing that I don’t even understand, but it has remember those cars that had the headlights that would look around the corner for you. Yes, this has that I don’t even know how to get this thing on my head, it’s so intense, but it this has lights that move, so it has lights.
It also adapts when you’re looking at it. So it figures out how much light you need to guide your path and will Ratchet back depending on what you need, so that it can preserve battery, and it has a basically computer back here that you wear on your head. This is, I feel, like this is a one of those things that they wore in the 80s.
That was like the computer of the future on top of your head, and this is researchers were excited about tests. This is one hundred and seventy-five dollars, which is just absurd for a head lamp. Well, but if it’s one of those things that if I were in you know the Amazonian rainforest yep and I had to get home in the middle of the night, I would want this thing and this this is easily the least practical thing I could possibly imagine Bringing on a camping trip, it’s a humidifier, it’s called the melody made by a company called sound cast.
Okay, it was, I think, 10 pounds. It’S a 360 degree speaker. It has 20 hours of battery life. That’S basically all this thing is Wow battery and it sounds awesome like really really good and you can you know we could annoy everyone within 40 miles of us with this thing and it has bluetooth and you can plug it into a line in and you know, There’S the jam box, which you could fit 40, oh yeah, and I guess if you brought 40, damn boxes it’ll probably be louder than this, but all in one.
This is really cool and really expensive and might also be a king goodbye. So this is a car. I would never get honestly. I would never recommend to anyone that they take this on a camping trip, but if you do you’ll be super stoked about it, because it sounds fantastic okay, so let’s go back to GPS for a second sure.
So I’m a challenge for you, so we’re gon na get some sleep we’re gon na. You know sleep in these. Unbelievably incredible tents actually get the crappy one that you set up and I’m gon na sleep in both of the unbelievable tents. It’S gon na be great, but so then, tomorrow morning, what’s gon na happen? Is we have all these cool GPS gadgets and I’m going to take them all? Okay and you are gon na, take none of them all right and you’re gon na get a compass.
I bought you a compass, it was, it was 13 dollars. You get a regular compass, it’s just a cardinal direction. It’S a compass, okay, it has a hand on it. All I know, and then we’re gon na go, get lost, we’re gon na go, get terribly lost and we’re gon na race back to basically this spot.
Okay, it’s back. First wins: okay, all right! Let’S go get ready now: okay, challenge accepted, sir imagine you’re, camping and suddenly you’re stranded. You took a wrong turn. Looking for the lake or running away from a bear, and now you don’t know where you are, you could follow the path of the Sun. I guess, but I have no idea – do that something about east and west right, so Evan and I decided to get the exact same amount of lost in our campground and chart two very different paths: home mine, insanely, high tech, Evans, decidedly low-tech David had all the Gadgets we’ve brought – and I had a $ 13 keyring compass from REI, because David wouldn’t buy me anything better. So he parted ways and I basically just started wandering off.
I had a vague sense of where we’d come and it was still early enough in the morning that I could sort of figure out where the right direction was. Then it was just a matter of following the past and making sure I was always headed in roughly the same direction, navigating without any gadgetry, it’s mostly about keeping your eyes open and minding your direction. Oh and getting back before sunset. I, on the other hand, had four gadgets to guide me home, the Garmin Phoenix, a crazy $ 400 high-tech watch that has GPS all kinds of sensors for altitude and pressure, alarm clocks, and god only knows what else I liked it mostly for one thing you can At any time set a waypoint, basically, it drops a pin wherever you are, then no matter where you are just navigate to your Waypoint.
Once you’ve figured out all that clunky menus and you’re set and in case that didn’t work, I had another Garmin device, the Oregon 650 T. It looks like the ugliest Android phone ever and works that way too. But it’s also a super powerful gps device and just in case I brought my phone along, oh and just in case it got dark. Before I made it, I had the hundred and seventy five dollar Petzl now headlamp the crazy high-tech flashlight with adaptive lighting.
That looks around corners, so I was either gon na make it back before Evan or just outlive him in the woods somewhere. All David had to do was follow directions. I had to figure out mine for myself. Luckily, we weren’t in a particularly complicated place.
There definitely weren’t any bears. My compass never showed me exactly where we were or where I was supposed to be. It just showed me where I’d been and where I was going. I made kind of a beeline for our campsite, but it wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought. First of all, I had to constantly look at a screen and I tripped over everything.
Second, GPS really isn’t perfect. All three of my devices told me slightly different things and would occasionally reset if they lost signal and tree-filled spots. I’D find out. I was going in the wrong direction only after my watch figured it out on some level having only one direction was kind of useful. I knew roughly, where I needed to be and roughly how to get there. I could make my own pass as long as I was heading in the right direction, so, ultimately we made it back at pretty much the same time. I bet if we switch places Evan would me by a thousand miles, though David beat me by a few seconds, but I’m pretty sure I’d have destroyed him if the odds were evened. But that’s the thing about these gadgets they’re really great, if you’re a novice but for most people all they do is bring you up to speed.
If you’re an experienced camper, you don’t really need a fancy GPS to get back to camp, though it certainly doesn’t hurt. But if you’re new at it it’s huge, I wasn’t paying any attention at all what we were getting lost and with only a compass to my name, I definitely would have died. That’S true of a lot of the things we used on our trip, brilliant. Our camp stove was probably overkill, even though it was awesome even having a super easy to assemble tent was probably more than you needed. All these devices are great and they definitely make camping less daunting, but even after having all these toys I’ll probably just go back to camping the way I always did, except the biolite stove, I’m keeping that one around just to charge my phone.
So one thing technology hasn’t really changed is that by the end of camping, you’re, still just gross so we’re all gon na go home and take a shower, which means that’s our show thanks. So much for watching we’ll see you next week. .