Road Trip to 15 National Parks, what do I need?

1 - correction. The 2 outlet inverter I used on the 2nd trip was a 400w inverter, not 250w. I used it to charge camera battery and AA rechargeables at same time. Or laptop while driving.

As for a recommendation. I would suggest staying at Bryce Canyon when doing the parks in that area. When I was there I stayed at Zion and drove to the others. Bryce is more central, and is a bit cooler in late evening than Zion. Staying at Bryce you can hit Zion and Capitol Reef. Zion has a max stay of 14 days in 1 year. I used them up.

First trip was tent camping. And was late June through July. Even though its very hot during the day bring a decent sleeping bag (guessing your camping). Basically you will be sweating till about 3am when you wake up freezing. Amazing you could be laying there sweating away in the heat at 11pm. And then just couple hours later the temp dives and you dive into the bag. Wet wipes is a idea my mom came up with when we went hiking when I was younger. For days when you can't shower, using wet wipes to clean up some, is very refreshing / smell relief. ;)

2nd trip was in a very small pop-up camper. Little easier but still a little bit of a hassle. The parks, especially up towards Tetons / Yellowstone about securing your food (bears). If you leave food in tents they will ticket you. It has to be in an enclosed vehicle (non-convertable) or bear proof container if hiking. Some camp sites do have lock boxes.

Most of the parks will not allow you to use solar showers / portable showers unless you catch the water! On my 2nd trip I brought a portable shower with me. I even bought a catch floor after reading the camping rules. I used a battery powered shower pump, and a second one to use as a drain for the catch floor. In Yellowstone I was given a warning ticket for the shower. But after I showed them the catch floor they said ok.

I didn't worry so much about having alot of cards. I brought a laptop with me and at first just saved to the hard drive. But even that was nearing full so I bought a reem of CD's. With a whole month your going to be taking a lot of pics. I would bring a laptop that can write cd's (prefferably DVD's) and some blank discs. For traveling I used Microsoft's Streets and trips with GPS locator. It worked very vell. Having the map on the laptop screen was very good. You may want a portable one for hiking anyway. But the laptop version is very nice for traveling in the car.

thanks for the additional info! I thought you possibly meant 400 for the inverter because that is what it looked like on Amazon for something to charge two different things at once. only $50 or something too which won't break the bank, but will def be a life saver on the road.

We will be in an RV so we won't have to deal with outside showers or food problems i guess. It also has some good AC. Hopefully we can get some spots at the camping grounds to get water and power, and then to dump when needed. you prob didn't have any experience with that from tent camping and using a pop up trailer. We are planning on buying a Magellen roadmate GPS system for the trip, and bringing a Mac laptop to put all our photos on. We also have a TB external hard drive we could bring i guess.

Oh, and we have already had some experience with using baby wipes haha. Not the ideal solution, but they get the job done when in a bind. Thanks again.
 
Oh! So you really meant two lenses on two cameras! :lmao: Thanks for the correction.

skieur

On a day out i will only take 50mm

Interesting! I would definitely NOT shoot in any of the mentioned parks without wide angle, normal and a telephoto zoom to 400 plus mm.

skieur


I don't shot landscapes so it's not a problem, my favorite photographer used to only go out with a 50mm or 28mm (Henri Cartier Bresson)
 

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