Category: Trip

Coleman Coastal Xtreme Series Marine Portable Cooler 70L

On By arcoleoIn Beach, Food Storage, Outdoors, Travel, TripLeave a comment

For the money, this really can’t be beat. I did a bunch of research and this cooler held food cold for 3.5 days in 80 degree days, whereas the Yeti, at 10x the price, lasted only 4 days. Scientific? No, but close enough. At under $40, you just can’t beat it. Is it large? Yes. It’s useful only for car camping, picnics, having beer cold when everyone is over for a bbq, etc. I sometimes wish I had gotten a 50L because this holds far more food than I care to carry and takes up valuable bed space in the truck. Ah well, I don’t feel like buying another.

Make sure you get the Marine version – the hinges are metal instead of plastic. It should last longer. It’s also white so it doesn’t get bleached by the sun.

Colombia III – Ciudad Perdida Trek

On By arcoleoIn Colombia, Jungle, Outdoors, Spring, TripLeave a comment

After the scuba diving I signed up to do the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) trek.  It was advertised as being 50km long and four days.  What a lie.  It turned out to be 73km with three days of actual hiking.  Being out of shape, it was brutal for me.  I did however get in much better shape than I thought I could in three days.

[insert long summary here]

One thing that came out of it was realizing I could push myself into much better shape than I thought.  When I got home I started running.  I’m currently only able to run three miles in just over half an hour, but that’s more than I’ve been able to run without stopping in over twenty years.

Colombia – Part II – Scuba Diving

On By arcoleoIn Colombia, Outdoors, Summer, Trip, WaterLeave a comment

The second part of my trip was spent Scuba diving.  I spent four days in Taganga with Poseidon Dive Center.  It was fantastic.

I did the following

  • Deep diving to almost 40 meters
  • Drift diving where you just drift with a current
  • Night diving where I saw crabs fighting, giant colorful lobster, and fish sleeping in the water
  • Regular diving where I saw fish of every color and tons of clams, moray eels, etc

The water was about 75 degrees which was perfect for me for skin diving.  Every day I dove Nitrox so I never felt tired afterwards.

I also got my Advanced Open Water PADI certification, so that was nice.

Grover Hot Springs State Park

On By arcoleoIn Mountain, Outdoors, Sierra Nevadas, Trip, WinterLeave a comment

We went to Lake Tahoe, hoping to camp at Sugar Pine Point, because it’s open all winter, except it was closed.  The reason given was that there had been too much snow fall.  To be fair, the snow snow covered the permanent bear boxes.  It would have been a lot of work to keep the site serviceable, but still, they could have simply stipulated that guests have to clear out their own bear bags.

We ended up snow-shoeing instead.  It was fun, leisurely, and passed the time.  When it came time to find somewhere to sleep, we got in the car and kept calling places until we found Grover Hot Springs State Park.

This place was a serious find.  It’s an hour from Sugar Pine Point, but absolutely worth it.  The snow cover there was a foot or less, but that was ok.  We just set up the tent on the snow and went to sleep.  It had a clean bathroom, so that was good.  The nice part of the site was that it wasn’t far from a perfect sized river.

The real find came when we realized we were five minutes away from a hot spring you could get into.  It was a huge pool steaming hot surrounded by snow.  Next to the hot spring pool was a regular pool heated to 85 degrees so you could cool off.

Sitting in the hot spring, surrounded by snow covered meadows and mountains is the way to go.  Absolutely come here if you have the chance.