Trip Planning

As you may know, we embarked on a journey to Yellowstone earlier this summer.  We planned for several months, reading guidebooks and gear reviews.  In this post, I will tell you about a few of the items we packed.  I'll update the blog as I have have time, describing our trip and adding more info about the gear we chose to take.

First, we knew that we needed more room to haul things since there were six of us in my Suburban.  We decided to buy a Yakima roof box.  We thought that one narrow box would be a good choice since it would allow us to put our bikes or paddleboards on the roof rack next to it for future trips.  We chose the Yakima Rocketbox 11.  We mounted it to the roof and loaded it up with sleeping bags and mats.  As the car started to fill up, we decided that we might should have gotten a bigger box.  We ended up buying a Thule Evolution box to add to the other side.  Good decision!  I'll compare the features of the two boxes later.

After our trip to Dale Hollow Dam, I realized that I am too old to sleep on the ground without a great deal of padding.  My shoulders and hips ached all night as I tossed back and forth.  I wasn't alone in this realization, as our friend who went with us had the same experience.  Michael suggested that we look at the Big Agnes Sleeping Giant.

It is a memory foam pad in a cover that you zip your existing sleeping mat into.  What a lifesaver!  It's not something that you'd want to carry on a backpacking trip, but we were planning to camp just a few feet from the car for about two weeks.  I slid my Therm-a-rest pad into it, and it felt almost as good as my bed.  I couldn't imagine sleeping on the ground this long without it!

Michael and I have Big Agnes Buffalo Park sleeping bags.  We chose them because they were a lightweight, synthetic bag in a rectangular shape to give us a little more room than a mummy bag since weight was not an option on this trip.  We like the sleeve on the bottom to slide your sleeping pad into so that you're not sliding off your sleeping pad during the night.  We also like the cotton/poly lining of this bag.  It just doesn't feel as sticky as nylon to me on hot summer nights.  It turns out that we might have overestimated the nighttime temperatures for this trip.  These bags were rated for 40 degrees.  Luckily we had our Sea-to-Summit silk/cotton bag liners to add a little bit of warmth to our bags.  We had bought them mainly to keep our bags cleaner, but the extra warmth was appreciated a few nights. 

Taylor had a Big Agnes Lulu bag.  She is cold-natured, so we chose this 15 degree bag for her.  Hunter had a Big Agnes Cross Mountain bag.  It is a synthetic, 45 degree bag.  They each also had Sea-to-Summit liners.  Connor had the North Face Tigger bag.  Julie, unbeknownst to me, didn't have her own bag.  I'm not really sure where Michael thought she would sleep.  She had a bag at home; he just didn't think we needed to bring it on the trip.  More about that later.

A friend introduced us to Yeti Coolers a few weeks ago, so we chose the Yeti 75.  It is grizzly-proof, so we could use it in bear country.  We had to put it on a hitch carrier because the back of the Suburban was too full.  We took a Lodge dutch oven, a bag of charcoal, and a Jetboil stove for cooking.  We packed several bags of Wise and Mountain House backpacking meals to cook when we were in a hurry.

I think that's about it as far as gear goes.  The Suburban was about as full as it could possibly get!