5 Unsung Gear Heros
It’s not uncommon for people to ask us what our gear recommendations are for camping and hiking. We always recommend comfortable camp chairs, Bedrock Sandals, headlamps, a nice camera for capturing your travels, but recently we’ve come to realize there are a few things that we always forget to mention.
We’ve started referring to a few pieces of gear as our unsung heroes. Our unsung heroes are things that we use every day and often find ourselves wondering what we’d do without them, but for whatever reason always forget to recommend them. Maybe we forget them because they seamlessly fit into our lives and using them is second nature to us.
Today the unsung heroes: Binoculars, walkie-talkies, utility knife, Garmin InReach, and the Garmin Instinct will forevermore get the recognition they deserve!
Though this blog post was made in partnership with REI, the opinions are entirely our own.
Please note: The links provided in this blog post are affiliate links. If you end up purchasing some of these pieces of gear we get a very small portion of the sales. Thank you as always for supporting us and our life on the road, it gives us the opportunity to share so extensively with you all!
Binoculars
For the last few years, we’ve carried the Nikon Travelite VI 12 x 25 Binoculars. We love them because they’re compact and easily can be stored in our glove box. There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t use them. We like to keep binoculars on hand so we can investigate the landscape while driving, carry them with us on our packs for route finding on trails, and for looking at distant wildlife. We initially got the Nikon Travelite for its small form factor and because they were affordable.
Now that we know we use our binoculars heavily we’re looking to upgrade to a stronger set that can give us more zoom than we currently have. We’d like to upgrade to either the Nikon Prostaff 7S 10 x 42 Binoculars or the Nikon Monarch 7 10 x 42 Waterproof Binoculars to get up close and personal with wildlife and the added benefit of waterproofing. Regardless of an upgrade, we will hold onto our traveling set to keep in the glove box for easy access!
Walkies Talkies
Walkie-talkies are incredibly handy for a number of reasons but our two favorite ways to use them are for communicating with friends if we are traveling together and for coordinating shots where a person needs to be far away.
Last summer while we were filming A Summer Adrift we were with Chase & Aimee, and Peter & Shruthi all summer and drove in a small convoy. We made sure that there was a walkie-talkie in each vehicle to coordinate if someone got caught at a light, split up to look for a camp spot, and even just have idol conversations on long drives. If you ever plan to travel in a group, you must have a set of walkies on you. It makes coordinating easy and a lot of fun!
Our other common use for walkies is when Owen and I are trying to take a photo where we have to split up and put enough distance between each other that we can’t communicate with one another. Here is a photo that is an example of this:
By the time I made it over to the location where Owen wanted me we couldn’t hear each other and didn’t have cell service. Because we had walkie-talkies I had one in my pocket so he could tell me when to hold still or if I needed to love over a little in one direction or another. We are a little biased, but because we had the walkie we felt like we got a great final result!
Garmin InReach Mini
There are so many reasons to love the Garmin InReach line. We personally carry the mini which requires you to carry your cell phone to pair it and operate some of the more advanced settings. Here is a minute I will dive into the differences between the Mini and the Explorer and layout which I’d recommend based on how you plan to use it. For now, let’s talk about what we use the Mini and why it’s one of our unsung heroes.
We purchased the InReach mini to take with us on the John Muir Trail. For those two weeks, we had it tracking our every move and updating a map every 30 mins with our location so our families could log in to our map and track our progress. We also send out pre-made messages every night to let them know we had made it to our next camp spot safe and sound. For that type of long-distance hiking, it was an invaluable tool to be sure that our families knew that we were doing well and making progress.
Now we carry it with us every time we hike, be it for the day, or every night so if something were to happen we could send out an SOS to get help, or even send a message to our family to let them know if anything happened. We’ve also used it to request geo-location-specific weather reports to help us plan our summits when we didn’t have any service to be sure that we had a good window in the weather.
Yet another way that we have used the InReach is when we’re traveling in a group and venture ahead to find a spot or investigate an area. We then will send a text and coordinates to those who are still in service where we decided to sit still so they could come to meet us.
Those are just a few ways that we like to use the InReach. It’s become an invaluable tool for us across so many facets of our travels. At $350 for the mini, it is a big upfront investment but we see it as insurance for our safety and those who we travel with!
Alright now, let’s break down the differences between the Mini and the Explorer so you can best choose the right option for you:
Here are some of the stats stacked up against one another:
After doing a lot of our own research I felt like the big features that drove our decision.
I’d recommend the InReach Mini if you plan to use it like we do for sharing your location with family, send premade messages just to check-in, receive weather reports, and have the ability to send an SOS.
If you want all of those things and more I’d recommend going with the Explorer+. The Explorer+ really shines if you do a lot of winter activities because you can fully navigate the Explorer with your gloves on. With the Explorer+ you also get the ability to have graphical GPS navigation, easily compose and send messages to the family or search and rescue, and it has longer battery life.
Garmin Instinct Solar
I’ve been wearing a Garmin Instinct solar watch for the last year continuously and despite the fact that it lives on my wrist and I look at it constantly, I always forget to recommend this watch. Again, I think a piece of gear that fits so seamlessly into your life that it goes unnoticed is a sign of how good it really is.
I’ve always been a watch wearer but made the switch to a smartwatch just before hiking the John Muir Trail so we could track our own progress for the sake of navigation. Ever since I have grown attached to wearing a watch that tracks exercise and logs coordinates for us to refer back to later.
There is a lot I love about the Instinct Solar Watch so here is a quick list of the highlights:
Garmin watches have the most comprehensive list of activity types that they can track. Anything from SUP to Cross Country Skiing.
Easily accessible moon phase tracking in addition to moonrise, moonset, sunrise, and sunset times. This is really helpful for us when we’re shooting time-lapses… which is often.
The watch face is smaller and lighter than other comprehensive smartwatches I’ve owned in the past
I wear the surf addition so I have access to tide charts for planning surfing
The watch face is a tiny little solar panel to help boost the watch’s battery life while outside. A quick note on this: The watch does not have a strong enough solar pull to totally sustain the watch on solar but it does notably extend the battery life.
The Garmin Connect App is what the watch syncs to have incredibly comprehensive data including the quality of your sleep and stress levels over the last week.
Those are the highlights of all the things that I love about the Garmin Instinct solar watch. I just love using it to track every hike, run, and exercise so I can keep an eye on my personal progress. I also love that the watch is taking a step in the environmentally friendly direction with the solar capabilities because it is more gentle on our power supply in the truck which is also entirely solar!
All of that just to say, if you are on the market for a tech watch, I can’t recommend it enough!
My tried and true. Had this multi-tool since I was 10!
Multi-tools
I remember when I got my first multi-tool, I was around 10 years old, and my Dad said “If you are going to be outdoors you need to carry this with you because you never know when you’re going to need it.” To this day I still carry that exact Leatherman with me everywhere I go. Now, twenty years later I’ve added to my collection.
The closest thing to my tried and true:
When we’re hiking and backpacking I always have my multi-tool on hand. We also carry one in the cab of the truck and one on the camper. We find that by having them strategically placed all over our “home” we’re never left wanting. While on trial I often use my multi-tool for cutting up cheese and sausage which is a favorite on-the-go snack of ours. I also use it to whittle sticks for smores, cutting fishing line that is tangled into branches (because it can snare unsuspecting birds and animals so I always try to take it out with me if I spot it), and open backpacker meals.
In addition to those things, multi-tools, depending on which you have, can also feature corkscrews, tweezers, scissors, toothpicks, the list goes on. With all those tools easily on hand, there is no limit to what you can do!
My personal favorite from the Swiss Army line is the Huntsman knife because I like the tools it comes with like the mini saw. I’ve actually used that before to cut a little notch into a branch I was having a hard time breaking down for a fire:
The Swiss Champ is for those who like to go above and beyond:
Snackin’ with my multi-tool on the JMT
The low profile multi-tool
That covers what once was our unsung heroes of gear that we carry. Now that I’ve sung their praises it feels like all is right in the world! Again, I don’t know why we always forget about these things because they’re so good to us. I’m curious if this blog post brought any pieces of gear to mind for you that are your unsung heroes? Let us know in the comments below because I’m curious if there is anything we’re still overlooking! I’m sure for weeks to come we’ll think of more things that should have been on this list.
Thanks for reading and we’ll see you down the road!
MAK
