This is a blossom year for the Day family. A year when our recent growth blooms into a flower of wonderful experiences. When Chelsea and I started out, we cultivated our relationship and discussed what we wanted our family to look like and do. We decided adventure would be the foundation of most of what we did when the boys were young. Now all we had to do is add water.
Last year, the Day family went on a 5000 mile road trip to Yellowstone, the Rockies, and the beautiful dinosaur-laden deserts of Utah. We learned a great many things along the way, many of which involved increasing our efficiency and mobility. Traveling with two toddlers, two dogs and grumpy Chelsea brought out some severely large holes in my travel plans.
The first step involved learning what to pack as far as essentials. Even though we brought a tent to set up, I figured out pretty quickly that setting up camp every day after driving from sun up to sun down was nearly impossible. Setting up a tent in the dark every night only to hastily put it away right when we got up so we could cover as many miles as possible sucked. Like, a lot. More so as Chelsea was in the throws of her nausea-filled first trimester. The second step was improving the vehicle so we would get wherever we wanted to go. This included adding a brand new suspension with a 6″ lift and new BF Goodrich All Terrain tires. After making a three hour emergency drive from Casper Wyoming to Cheyenne in a freezing snow storm proved effortless, the wheels and lift established themselves as an essential.
With all these experiences under our belt, we recently turned to add new improvements to our travels and adventure experiences. One of which Chelsea and I discovered while speaking at a conference called Dad 2.0 in San Francisco this year. While perusing a number of displays set up around the convention, I discovered an interesting set of bottles and towels.
Now water bottles aren't really my thing, but then again I noticed something was different about these. I spoke with a handsome gentleman named Brian who gave me the walk around on their equipment called Arctic Cove. One was a hand pump bottle which acted as a handheld mister. Another was a battery powered fan which used Ryobi power tool batteries and sat on top of a Home Depot bucket as it sprayed water from the bucket as a fine cooling mist.
I thought this was really neat as it reminded me of the cooling fans we used on the sidelines at UCLA when I played football. Based on my experience I remembered these fans were a lifesaver when playing in places like Sun Devil stadium in October. It really is HELL out there. Brian informed me Arctic Cove was about the “essence of cool” and making summer family gatherings more comfortable.
It made sense that I'd need to get my hands on some of this coolness.
I noticed everything from Arctic Cove was portable and mobile, which gave me a really cool idea. What if I made my own family gathering and added an element of our family adventures to it? What if I took the mobility of Arctic Cove and smashed it together with the mobility of our family and love of the outdoors?
Enter the “Desert Oasis.” We recently improved our mobile housing situation with a CVT rooftop tent and awning. We also acquired a Briggs and Stratton P3000 generator. We had the shelter, we had the power, and now we had the water. We packed up the boys and headed out into the heart of the Anza Borrego desert. I found a nice flat spot and parked The Bear and prepped the trailer.
One really cool thing about Anza-Borrego is that a large portion of it is set on BLM land (Bureau of Land Management) which means you go pretty much wherever your wheels point. I thought it was a bit ironic as I set up camp on an old dry sea bed, which was beautifully littered with the pearlescent shells of oysters.
The air was a warm 85 degrees and a slight breeze came creeping down the mountain face. With Minion in a bit of a fussy phase, we actually found he was the most appreciative of the Arctic Cove CHILLSTITCH Towel which he could wear while Chelsea fed him. I was shocked at how cool these little towels kept us. The boys loved playing with the Bucket Top Misting Fan and Sidekick really liked his own little Personal Misting Bottle, as sharing with Some Boy is NOT always on the top of his to do list.
With the Bucket Top Misters creating our own desert oasis, we comfortably played the day away until the sun (or “shine shine” as the boys call it) went night night. Dinner was cooked and the magic of our private oasis came to life in our own ironic showing of Disney's Frozen. With so much space, the boys got to run around, watch the movie and eat little snacks without a wall in sight.
Our weekend adventure was kept cool and fun, especially with our own portable climate control.