I love camping and I’m plenty happy to go somewhere that has no phone signal, no wifi, no connectivity. It’s nice to not have the constant onslaught of news and social and people “just checking in.” 

But I still need my devices. My iPhone is also my camera a lot of the time and has my guided meditations. My Apple Watch is my heart monitor and method for tracking my exercise and health. Both are tied to my insulin pump and my continuous glucose monitoring system so that regardless of whether my pump is under my clothes, I will know when there is a blood sugar level that is too high or too low. And my insulin pump needs a bit of charge every couple of days to keep going and keep me alive. Not to mention that our iPads are our books and notebooks and have all the media we like to watch or listen to. My tiny laptop is where I work on my writing, which I love to have the time and space for while we camp.  Occasionally my camera battery also needs a bit of juice or one of our rechargeable black diamond lights is getting dim. 

All of these things take power and need recharging at random points throughout a trip. After our first couple of camping experiences in the T@B, we realized that we really needed the marine battery for the T@B to manage its own systems and phantom power draw and that we couldn’t lean on it as heavily for device recharging as we did when we had the Silver Shadow. 

So we got the Goal Zero Yeti 200x and wow is this thing amazing. It can take 12v, AC, USB and USBC in to power whatever you need. It has 60W PD for USBC so that you can quickly charge a device like a laptop or a an iPad. While you are charging, it shows you how much power it has left. It can be recharged by plugging it in at home or can be recharged with 12v in your car while you drive from one place to another. It can also be charged with Goal Zero solar panels if you’ve got a decent amount of sun wherever you are. 

We also got the Goal Zero Guide 10 Plus solar panels to help keep it with plenty of power when we are out for longer camping trips. It really helped when we spent 8 days off the grid camping last summer. 

We use the Yeti 200X when we camp to keep all of our devices juiced so we don’t have to use the T@B power and can save it for showers and keeping the fridge cool. We use it at home for recharging a variety of devices around the house and for having handy power when there is a power outage. It saved us last summer when we went a week without power, but still needed our phones and laptops to be able to work. It was a little spendy, but we expect to get years of use out of this setup and it’s nice to know you don’t have to worry about dead devices.