What is the best way for you to use your ice coolers? Do you have more than one and what size and quantity combination works best for you? We find that no matter how many coolers we have, we always find ways use them because they’re so handy. When we went away camping on the last long weekend we used 5 camping coolers in sizes from 27qt up to 105qt.

It pays to have a variety of camping coolers when catering for a big group.

One 70qt Yosemite is like the freezer with all the frozen meat etc as well as milk and milk products. We pre-froze all of the meat and put plenty of ice in there to make sure it stayed ice cold. Starting with such a pre-chilled cooler worked great … things stayed so cold we actually had to pull out the meat about 4 hours before we needed it because it was still frozen.

Making pizzas on the smooth food-grade surface of the 70qt Yosemite cooler

One 85qt Denali cooler was used for all our cold beverages – beers, sodas etc. We keep lots of ice in this one and find the perfect amout is about 1/2 drinks and 1/2 ice until it’s full to the top. The drinks cooler was opened constantly (of course!) and yet even after the last icy cold drink was gone it still had plenty of ice remaining. It was great having a cooler that kept ice for the whole trip without needing to go to the store to get more ice.

We used a 105qt Yosemite like an insulated pantry where we kept things like fruit and vegetables that don’t need to be all that cold but they might spoil if we left them out in the summer heat. We didn’t use ice in this one, however it stayed reasonably cool at around 64 degrees when the ambient temperature outside was around 91 degrees.

Megan and the labradors ... Chedda (gold lab) and Indie (black lab)

One 27qt Yosemite we used for our dog meat (we camp with 5 dogs!). We had the dog meat pre-frozen in a 4qt ice cream container. It had no other ice or ice packs inside so there was quite a big air space which isn’t the ideal way to pack a cooler however the results were surprising. We put a thermometer inside and after 2 days it was still 39 degrees inside! With just that one block of frozen meat, it stayed as cold as a refrigerator for several days in the middle of summer which is a great result.

The tough little 27qt Yosemite props up the tarp over the dog trailer

One 50qt Acadia is used as a storage box for all our cooking utensils etc. Of course we didn’t need to use a cooler for this however we had it there and it packed really well in the back of our vehicle so we thought we’d use it.

We had the extended family along so it was great having so many coolers on hand to be able to use them so efficiently. With having so many coolers now we wonder what we ever did without them.

With so many people there we used the coolers as seats for people to sit on, and also as a step up to setup our tarp over the communal area. We even used them as a barrier around our Weber barbecue to keep the kids away from the hot surfaces during cooking.

We made pizzas using the Weber and needed a nice flat clean surface to roll the pizza base. What better surface than the top of a 70qt Yosemite cooler which worked a treat!

We used to use a much lower quality type of camping cooler however we found that we constantly had problems with the hinges, lids and latches breaking. That’s what led us to go into business as True Blue Coolers to develop a better quality of cooler that would not only keep our food and beverages cold for the whole camping trip, the coolers themselves also wouldn’t break all the time like the lower quality ones did.

For more information about how to keep ice longer and getting into really good quality coolers that last for a long time, check out our main website at www.truebluecoolers.com and request our Official Guide to Quality Ice Coolers that Eliminate the Hassles Associated with Traditional Coolers.