Travel and Vaping What about camping?

[DezRo]

Kinda surprised I've never seen a thread about this...so here goes.
I do a lot of camping and hiking in the summer and sometimes I'm gone in the woods for days at a time.
I've never developed a method for charging batteries and maintaining equipment so I just always end up going back to cigarettes.
This year I might go all out and get a solar charging unit.
These things are about a big as a PDA and can store enough juice to charge a 1,000 mah battery once or twice, generally.
You can clip it to your back pack or put it on the dash of your car in a sunny parking lot. All good ways to capture solar energy throughout the course of a day.
This is ideal for backpacking scenarios, etc. where you can't get bailed out by your car's cigarette lighter power source.
Also there are USB battery chargers which store 10,000 mah or so.
That could be very handy in a car camping situation or festival or something.
You could charge your batteries for a week with that thing before having to succumb to a night at motel 6 and some wall outlets.
Either way, I'm just curious.. do you vapers actually go outside?
How do you deal with long trips away from home, or are we all supposed to own motor homes with generators now?


The other thing is Bears.
Bears in the back country (or even some maintained camp sites).
They smell food scraps, chewing gum, perfume, toothpaste, just about anything with a scent, from miles away.
Is this something to be concerned about when entering bear country?
My e-juices seem like they would be the perfect bear attractant.
I even have a flavor called "honey".
What kinds of precautions would be advisable?
Should we be putting all our e-cig stuff in the "bear hang" food stash? (can't tell you how hard a time I would have doing that every night).

Where are the outdoorsmans? Any vapors got any tips for keeping the vape going when trekking out and about and away from civilization?
I might just take up pipe smoking and mini-cigars this summer if these logistical roadblocks aren't able to be overcome.

 

[donnah]

I took my children tent camping over the weekend. But I did have power and was able to attach a heavy duty drop cord to the power box and attach a power strip to that and was able to charge my batts every day. BUT.. it depends on what device you use and if it uses spare batts.. I took my provari and a couple vv box mods. If you have enough batts, you can just charge them all up before you go and take them with you and change out as needed. The batts in my mods last all day so I could have gotten by just bringing spares. If you don't use pv's with removable batts, this would be a good excuse to buy one or two And also a good excuse to buy more spare batts to have during camping trips. Madvapes sells the small, plastic batt boxes very cheap.

If you're worried about bears smelling your juices, you can always store them and everything else in large zip lock bags. I was more worried about flooding tanks and getting juice everywhere but my cartos and tanks performed awesome! No flooding, no gurgling and not a drop of juice spilled Camping is not the place for dripping (for me anyway) and having to constantly refill cartos would be a pain! so carto tanks or bottom feeders are the way to go. It was all pretty effortless.

 

[tinajfreeman]

It may be just as cheap to buy a bunch of spare batteries and charge them before you leave. Would work fine unless you are on a week long backpacking trip where weight is an issue....even a couple of pounds makes a difference when you have to carry everything.

I like the solar idea though.

 

[cskent]

This topic came up quite a bit about a year ago so you might be able to use the search feature and find some old threads.

Unless you're a heavy vaper, a handful of 18650's should last you a week or so. When I was using 1000mah eGo's I'd get 12 to 14 hours of out of each one so 7 or 8 should last quite a while. For anything over a week you'd probably be better off carrying a couple of batteries and a solar charger. Radio Shack used to have a small solar charger that someone suggested, and it wasn't too expensive either.

 

[zoiDman]

I don't do as much camping as I would like. But when I do I take this along.

It's a 9,800mah@5v External Battery for a Notebook that also has USB Power Output. Works Great to Charge e-Cig Batteries as well as Cell Phones or a GPS.

The problem with Solar Charging is unless you get a Good, and usually Expensive one, it is going to take a Long Time to Charge an e-Cig Battery even with 100% Sun Light.


As to Bears...

I've done camping in Bear Country and there are a couple of Rules that you have to follow.

The First is Absolutely, Positively No Food in the Tent. No Candy Bars or Juice Bottles. No Gum or Even zip lock bags that had food in it. Nothing. You should just have your Sleeping Bag and your Flashlight/cell phone/camera/GPS and an Air Horn in the Tent. I would Never keep an e-Cig or e-Liquids in a Tent. Ever.

Second is Hang you food / gear from the Highest point you can find at least 100 yards from your camp. I like to cook/eat and go to the bathroom at least 50 yards from the tent and the fire. In bear Country, all I do at my camp site is sit around the fire, drink and sleep in the tent.

Also, bears don’t like noise. Especially strange noises. Many people put “Bear Bells” on their packs and ring Cow Bell ever so often when it camp. I like to wear a small Air Horn on my Belt and keep it in the tent when I sleep.

Last thing. If you do see a bear, know that you can Not out run it. Or out climb it. Best to just Slowly back up. Never Turn and Run. Sometimes a bear will charge a short distance and stop. Just keep backing up. But it doesn’t stop, drop to the ground, curl into a ball and cover your neck and head with your arms.

I had a Bear roll me around once in Glacier Park Montana. A Big Bear! I remained in a ball and tried to keep my pack between him and me while covering my neck. After about 3 minutes he walked away and then charged back. Did this about 5 times. Finally just gave up and left me and my buddy alone.

I also had a Bear come into my camp at night once when I was sleeping in a tent in Kings Canyon California. He made a mess of everything. When he got next to the tent I gave a Blast on the Air Horn. He took a swipe at the Tent and then Ran for the hills.

Best to contact the Park Service for the area you are going to camp in and talk to them. They will have lots of info regarding Bears and How to Avoid them.

 

[donnah]

I didn't worry too much about bears. We camped in family campgrounds in Asheville and Boone NC and bears weren't an issue. I was more concerned about filling tanks and such while away from the comfort of my desk at home. One night I filled a tank with a flashlight under my chin LOL. I am pleased that both of my tanks worked flawlessly and even the one night I did change out a carto, I had no problems. There would have been times over the last couple of years when mess would have been an issue but since I've pretty much got my setups finetuned, prep takes only a couple minutes and then it's just grab a PV and vape whenever I want to.