Kayak Camping Gear What I took Down the Mississippi River

what's up everybody so one of the most commonly asked for and requested videos when it relates to my Mississippi River trip was what gear did I bring please do a gear video what gear do brain where's the gear list why don't you do a gear list give me a gear list so here it is here's your deer list so how much I do this as best I can there's a lot of stuff to cover I'm not going to go into much detail on any one item and if you have questions about any specific item or want a full-blown should I buy here review on it I'd be happy to do that so just let me know before we get started I have a lofty goal of in a thousand subscribers here soon I really want the ability to be able to livestream from my phone so next time I go out on a journey or an adventure I can actually do that on the Mississippi River trip I was not able to do that because of my subscriber count so you know if you're willing to help me achieve that goal and really appreciate it so thank you very much if you do so starting with the electronics a big part of this trip for me was filming the adventure I wanted to try to make a great series for YouTube that everybody could watch and I could share with the world not everybody gets to go out and do an adventure so it was really important to me to do a good job filming that adventure so the main camera I used for that was the GoPro Hero black 7 or whatever it's called I had to go processions and backup cameras and you know they're getting on in years now but they still work really well they're as simple as it gets you know a point the camera push the button and you're off the run and it's really simple one of the things I used for filming was these little adjustable necks you know they allow you to rotate the camera around and it's a very familiar sound if you've watched the Mississippi River videos as far as the high month of the cameras to the boat I just used a dry bag and set the actual base that the camera comes on and I just put some some volts through it with these cat nuts on them and that would hold onto the bungee cords and these things would sit pretty pretty firmly on the top of the deck bag on the boat so they work great I used a sony cybershot for the very first day on the river so the camera I'm using now to film this video is the Canon sx7 4ths has a little flip up view screen on it which is really nice so I could talk to a camera and do you know different videos like that it was my point shoot camera is what I use to get good shots of the locks dams animals you name it barges and it was a great camera work the whole way the drone I brought the parrot anafi drone and for the most part I I really like the drone it's compact and small the arms fold in so you got a nice compact profile on his drone when you're not using it it's got all the features that the high-end drones have has to follow me the return to home I can do boomerangs it can do orbits that can do all that stuff and I did fog film with the phone every now and then you know sometimes I had to get get a video going really quick and the phone was always within reach I always had it tethered I'm a lanyard of some kind pretty much everything as far as filming was on a lanyard and these are just a simple lanyards you buy you see you know man Dex hang up and everything I had those tied to the cameras tied to the phone everything was on a lanyard and that would prevent me from dropping it in the river as far as storage of files I brought a stack of hard drives with me I had one 500 gig I had four one terabyte and 1/4 terabyte so I had just a ton of memory so for the cameras I did have a GoPro remote I do not like this remote I probably will never use it again it absolutely kills the batteries on the cameras I had nothing but problems every time I tried to use it far as filming with mounts and stuff you know I didn't have a selfie stick I don't think I use it a single time that don't think I made a past date three or four and then it was back on the way home with my wife I did have this little tripod here you know a little flexible leg tripod very lightweight which is what I really liked about it and actually this doubled as a paddle rack if you will I'd have it sit on the side of the boat and I could actually just pull up the leg when I sat and locks I just set the paddle in there and it would just hold it for me it was kind of a nice little feature so aside from hard drives and everything I had just a ton of little memory cards that had SD cards for the points and point shoots and then I had almost two dozen microSD cards for all the little cameras and everything the GoPros and everything the drone so a lot of people asked about charging so the way I kept everything charged was off of these ravpower battery packs or F power makes these battery packs are awesome and I had that one and then I had two of the twenty six thousand eight hundred millionth ones and these are the backup ones I only used the one after the the other one had broke so it was incredible that it lasted as long as it did so I would charge pretty much everything during the night with these packs then when these packs then during the day I would charge these packs off of a solar panel solar panel was just over the top of the kayak and this is a 22 watts I believe it was solar array and two USB plug ins and the thing worked amazing that's by so cool I don't know if you can still get them or not this one's several years old now but the thing we're great I mean they're the USB ports are getting a little rusty looking on it but it still works and I'm impressed it actually has enough power to charge the battery packs throughout the day so everything I would charge during the night I could recover that battery power just by using the solar charger all day so in order to transfer the files I bought this cheapy little Dell laptop here and it was like 150 bucks it has no processing power and almost no memory it's just almost completely useless but what it can do is it can transfer files from SD cards to the portable hard drives and that's how I kept my files off of the cameras and everything I bought this little device here I have no idea what an adapter it's Bayou Green and basically it's a USB that allows SD and micro SD cards to be put into there and so that was critical I couldn't transfer files from SD cards to the hard drives without this thing so let's see so lights pretty much everything I had I could charge off of the USB plugs one exception was my LED light this runs off doublea's I do have the bright tach lights that run off of the you know the one two three a batteries but I didn't want to have to rely on trying to find those batteries on the river I wanted to be able to just use double a's and triple a's because they're available everywhere that sells battery I use a fox le headlamp and this thing was nice it hasn't you know different modes and features to it but it charged does on a USB plug which is the coolest thing about it you saw this towards the end of the river this is a little red light blinker it's made for runners or bikes or whatever charges off USBs which is what I have it and it was just kind of one of those last-ditch things I bought before I left just in case that's going through the busy areas I thought maybe a blinking light might give me a little bit more visibility to the barges and all that I thought it actually would but nonetheless it was something I brought with the GPS was the Garmin inReach Explorer plus and this thing was great because you can buy a subscription and that subscription will give you the ability to text message so in the northern headwaters when you have no cell phone service whatsoever you can still send text messages through here it also has the Follow Me function to it so I can give a link to my family or friends and they can go online and actually see I had the two-minute ping and so every two minutes this thing would ping my location and they could look near-real-time on a map and see where i was i brought some little you know beatbox speakers with me here I don't know another brand that is das I guess and yet they were great I always felt a little guilty listening to music on the river I always felt like I should have been listening to the you know the sounds of nature but you know in reality you get a little bored battling every day there's not a lot to look at or do and it's kind of nice to have some music and kind of HAMP's you up a little bit work great charges on USB runs an SD card run bluetooth I use it quite a bit and then traded it in on my way through home for a smaller cheaper crappier model him because I wanted a radio to I had a few of these little lot type-c USB adapters so these just slide on to a normal USB microUSB and then it becomes a micro then it becomes a USB C plug and so I had a few of those that was for the GoPro and they worked fine so no big deal but you know I had cords cords cords cords you know tons and tons of cords I started thinking I was having issues down in like Iowa with my Chargers not charging and what are the none of that being was is the the cords were getting wet and then they would rust and once they would rust I would lose all connection and then they were useless so let's see I had the unit in submersible marine radio this thing is it floats and it can get soaking wet and be just fine this is to communicate with barge traffic ship traffic and the locks and dams I bought this little therm-a-rest NeoAir and this thing is it's a little air little air pump basically it blows up your sleeping pad runs out triple-a batteries I seriously was like thirty five dollars or something like that that was the stupidest thing and it feels just cheap and chintzy so I actually didn't think it would last the whole trip to my surprise it lasted the whole trip I think you only replace the batteries once and so this thing blew up my pad I don't even know 50 some odd times and worked every time it's not fast but what's nice about it is I can get everything laid out get blown up the pad and go do something for five ten minutes come back take us off and then finish off the pad and I've done the batteries you know I carried one extra GoPro seven battery I had triple A's double A's and then I had one for the cannon which I'm shooting on now and then I'm actually recording on it now but I have a little you know Sony voice recorder here with a little stereo mic on it alright so we'll get in the camp and stuff so the first tent I started the trip with was the Mountain Hardwear shifter - and I don't even know if you can get these anymore I think they're discontinued and I really liked it but I ended up trading it in when my wife came up to see me one time four or the snug pack jungle hammock has a bug net on it and everything like that it you know I actually had straps on it too so I could condense it down a little bit more and the snug back ionosphere and this is a little one-person temp so there was not only a little bit of savings on the size and room on these and weight but I didn't plan on using the tent as much and I wanted to use the hammock more I slept a lot better in the hammock it was more comfortable especially down south when it was really hot so I had the therm-a-rest venture pad I don't know maybe if it was a little wider I was slept better I've got sucked terrible on this thing I had this little well X pillow and and I love this little pillow that like if I could burn one pillow it would have been this one I had a sleeping bag liner from ELF smoking and you know it's just one of those thin things it gave me a little extra warmth when I needed it what I especially up in the northern headwaters we were still dealing with freeze warnings down south when it was so hot I actually just took this and use it as a bed sheet over the sleeping bag I had some straps for the hammock these are tree straps from Provencher they work fine ain't a whole lot to them one thing I loved was these giant tent spikes and these are sand spikes and I use these far more than I used any other of the spikes they held in all the soils and stuff it was real rocky I had a problem but I could drive them into dirt mud sand no problem and they're just their size it just makes them so easy to work with and I get back out so they are a big huge thing I'd use them to dig holes you know use your imagination as to why but I use them for many things and I just they work great so they're big they're not heavy they're made out of aluminum but but they did work great for me so definitely something I'd recommend I did have some of the smaller aluminum stakes with me if I use the tent and it was windy there's a couple occasions that I use these little government aluminum stakes and they work just fine too but I preferred the same spikes much more so I had a Ridgeline I got to look up what the name of this stuff is but this this is like 500 pound test or 250 pound test or something I mean it's a incredibly strong threaded rope and it it it really doesn't have any stretch or give to it so it worked great for the ridgeline they used it mostly for that I used this clothesline on a couple of occasions but it worked great I got done with the first part of the river and I dropped off in Hastings I switched out my hooker sleeping bag which I didn't actually talk about for a jungle jungle bag slick pack jungle bag and just like their jungle blanket if you've ever seen them they're nice to saw and have a you know insulating fabric I'm and all that they're very very lightweight this wasn't even that expensive but this was great for the lower part of the river because it was so hot but those nights where I had to deal with those mosquitos I was able to lay in this bag and not get too terribly overheated the sleeping bag I used in Minnesota was the Teton sports let's see here 20 degree bag so you know about 30 40 degree rating on it it packs down nice and small it was comfortable but it like I've dealt with some of the Nights in the very low 30s it was absolutely not sufficient for that I was freezing in those nights I didn't have the outdoor vitals I'll just draw a picture I'm up here because I didn't bring it in here with me but the only outdoor vitals ultralight tarp which I use is the cover for the hammock that then worked amazing that got zero complaints about that thing another thing that was very critical to the success of my filming was different dry bags and dry boxes so I got this go along from Target it's got no names on it no nothing this was what I kept my backup hard drive in and I bought these little Pelican cases this Pelican case I kept in the dry calm death bag with me and I actually had the Kanan point-and-shoot camera in here but yeah so that was a 1040 I also had a 1050 the 1050 is what I kept all of the hard drives in dry bags I had several different kinds that did do the review on the event from the sea2summit dry bags and these are nice with a dry bag compression bag so one had all my sleeping gear and the other one had all my clothes in it I had random dry bags this was one that came with my deck bag for my boat my sea2summit deck bag and then I had the snug back dry bags I had half dozen of these guys at different sizes one goal I had while I was on there while I was in the whole packing process was I wanted to be able to carry all my gear away from my boat in one load and so I needed two really big bags to do that so the first thing I did was this is actually just a little fabric II case I remember what it came with actually came with these ravpower things I think and I put in an old stuff sack for a inflatable mattress and this little this bag holds down all nice and small but it's just basically this huge stuff sack and so I could just fill this with all the food and water or whatever I had in the boat and then just carry it out with one big bag so and then to carry the rest of the gear I bought this Eagle Creek which one is this this is a 90 liter duffel bag so this then actually unfolds into a huge duffel bag with shoulder straps on it so you can use it as a backpack so this was my other you know it's a big commitment of space but like I said my goal was to be able to carry all my gear out of the boat in one haul and I could fit just just a ton of stuff into this bag so I worked really well all right so colvin items on the river um pretty much wore the same thing all the time it was just easier that way and you know you don't have a ton of room for clothes anyway so no undies here on these you're on these pick we're pick your poison on that one but let's start from the bottom so I had a pair of flip-flops I had these really thin lightweight water shoes and I actually used these things quite a bit I put a lot of miles in on these things and they weren't always the most comfortable to walk in but they worked so and then just a regular pair of socks I think I had one of those uh those kind of wool socks I can't remember what they're called but they're just like a really thin lightweight wool sock I use those at night and then just a regular pair with me too in case I needed them which I never really did by the end I was barefoot all the time I didn't even carry more so as far as pants go these are all Columbia pants that I bought and they're those convertible pants so either quick dry and then they of course have the pant legs that are removable and those are amazing you know especially in the lower river because at night I put the pant legs back on so mosquitos wouldn't bite me so bad but you know during the hot summer day you got a pair of shorts too so I had three pair of these with me towards the end of the trip I was only everywhere in the one pair cuz I mean after a while I just don't care no more so I wore several sleeveless shirts obviously this was the one that I wore probably the most and you may recognize it still exists it's just a I don't know what that synthetic material quick dry again you know nice lightweight kept me cool for the upper stretches on the river sometimes cool nights I wear you know this little really thin hoodie you can almost see straight through the think another clothing item I wore all the time was these at Columbia pfg button-up shirts this was the one that I wore around the majority of the river is are very lightweight very quick drying and they do have a UV resistance as well so it was a little bit of a sunblock for me as much as anything I did have bandanas with me I had two bandanas I used them occasionally this was the one that I would clip to my hat and the Maureen's to keep the Sun out of my face and off my neck and things I'd use it to clean the camera as I mean they're you know you just use them for everything so that's of course we we recognize the game against who hat with the binder clip on there I don't know what causes hat to self destruct the way it did but that brim totally got ripped up on it but just a baseball hat of any kind you know it was nice because it still was was protection from the Sun but a lot cooler than wearing some of the other hats the other hat that I wore a lot was the Tilley endurable airflow the LT m6 airflow hat bug net absolutely critical at very at various points along the river protecting the eyes I had a pair Oakley's with me thought to look up what they are I didn't have a beanie hat that I wore up in northern Minnesota I did have a pair of these fingerless gloves these are battle tested is what they're called I have no idea if they're available in I've had these things literally forever and I didn't wear them so much because of my hands getting sunburned which was an issue but my hands would sweat and get and you know especially with suntan lotion on I might I have a hard time holding on to the paddle of course I had the orange vest and the orange hat which I couldn't find it's it's it's around here somewhere some of the camp and stuff not even packed away but you know this thing I've never seen paddlers wear anything as ridiculously bright as this and that's fine it definitely wasn't a fashion statement it was function over fashion on the river for me and you know I had a lot of barge captains and even the ocean liner pilots say that they could see you know a kayaker and an orange vest and so I knew it was working and I was more worried about them seeing me then looking stupid wearing an orange vest so not really if you want to add them into you know a clothing item or a sleeping item but I had a pair of ear plugs with me actually a few pair of ear plugs with me I knew from my experience as captain at on the banks of Lake Pepin the trains run 24/7 on Lake Pepin and and so I brought a pair of earplugs to combat that at night and I use them a lot and there was also times down south when the the ambient noise of all the the night light was so loud that it was just nice to build up it was just nice to be able to put in a pair of earplugs and block that all out and go to bed also packed away is my North Face raincoat so obviously I'll throw an image of what that coat looked like but the raincoat was was a great addition to everything as well some of the random gear with I had with me as I did have a first-aid kit with me in a dry bag in that bag I had anywhere from just regular band-aids I had spray alcohol hand sanitizer I had liquid bandage I had like cloudy material should I get a really bad cut or something like that you know all kinds of stuff I mean I had toothpicks in here I had safety pins you know anything I could think of tweezers of course at a mirror in case I got crap in my eye some reason ever since I had LASIK I get stuff my eye but you know just all kinds of things like that so no I didn't use much of it thankfully what was there so so I think next thing to talk about that's easy enough is water storage so I took the MSR dromedary bags I had two 10 liter bags with me and then I also had a similar to this plastic water jug and I think it was a 2 gallon bag so I had two 10 liter bags and this one so I had a lot of water on board the boat a lot of people told you that way too much water that's fine I don't care I like water I drink a lot of water and so I haven't as much water as I wanted was important to me I carried the water so you know shouldn't make a make any difference to anybody else but the 210 liter bags we're all I actually needed to sustain me from town to town but I had that extra two gallons with me just in case so and then the the best water bottles I found was Fiji bottles they're supposed to square rectangular whatever they are bottles those things are amazing for the boat because they don't roll every time you paddle the boat so all right so of course many you know I didn't cook much while I was on the river I pretty much just ate stuff right out of the can or the boxer bag or whatever would come in the few times that cooked it was like dehydrated ground beef with mashed potatoes instant mashed potatoes and or some kind of a pasta noodle something like that so if I did cook I'd had a single pan kind of a shallow pan here with a lid and just cheapy aluminum whatever was I didn't bring any little pots or anything like that I did have as kind of my main stove was the MSR a little pocket stove running on isobutane fuel I had an alcohol stove with me I only used that a couple of times a well-used heat as a fuel for it cooked over a lot of stick fires that was probably the best way for me to do it I'd used Purell to get the fire going due to the flooding a lot of the sticks were still wet and everything so it was nice to be able to like get the fire going by using pure raw pure roll lights on fire immediately scrub pads and little sponges and stuff like that to clean it on dish soap and a little thing also when it comes to cooking stuff you know I brought that whatever little spices I wanted this is garlic salt that one always went really good with the dehydrated ground beef so I was another one that I brought so whatever spices I wanted to so a couple of the tools I brought along with on the trip I didn't bring much in the very beginning I did have a hat chick with me I ended up leaving that behind because there was no reason to I continued carrying that so this was not the folding saw hat that was a silky saw but I did have a folding saw with me that was used on day one and a little bit on day three I think it was I had a Leatherman with me I'm a pretty handy guy so if I couldn't fix it with a Leatherman then it would go in the trash and get replaced or just not be used anymore so the Leatherman you know what the players the knives saws the screwdrivers I mean there's everything I'd need right there to fix just about anything I had on the trip with me anyway so if it couldn't be fixed by the Leatherman then I probably didn't need to have it in the first place so I had a simple box cutter I've had this little box cutter forever it's made by Gerber the thin is just a tiny little aluminum box cutter you know with replaceable razor blade in it and you know I stuck it in my pocket the day I left I always carry this thing but I stuck at my pocket with me today I left in it it stayed with me the entire trip so I'm pretty excited that I still have it I did use it quite a bit actually here and there and I had to replace the blade a few times because it did get pretty rusty so as far as personal supplies toiletries if you will I of course had a roll call paper with me baby wipes you know those are obviously clean just about anything with baby wipes I had Gold Bond this stuff was great for I mean you can google all the different uses for it but let's just say it keeps things dry and prevents issues I used X's or is it they're dry sticks this stuff would last for days and days and days and keep you from stinking up there so it's good stuff put it on one time and I was good for a while I had a bar soap with me it was just like a bard of everybody told me a bar is a dumb float they don't float but it didn't really matter anyway I didn't drop them so I have my toothpaste toothbrush q-tips you know smoke pack makes these little microfiber towels this little towel here I mean that's the whole thing right there I could drive my entire self off with that towel handed up on the line assuming it was the two humidity would dry again pretty quickly alright so as far as a year in the boat you know the boats I put on extra bungee netting and that was just so I could stick things in you know on top of the boat wherever I needed to it you know - need to see cans that were empty stuck on top of the boat my shoes I mean any number of things that I just kept on top of the boat and you know one of the things that I kept on top of the boat was the ground spike and you see me use this and a couple of the Portage's and this is a rebar spike I made just simply you know a large t-handle a couple of you know sectioned off areas there so I could actually pass a rope through there tie a bowline in the kayak the Kevlar boat I'm the third boat I use because I'm spoiled I had a repair kit and this is basically there's fiberglass strips in here and then the different epoxies that are needed to you know I'd sandpaper gloves a mask everything I needed to to sand down an area of the kayak should I have had a puncture or a split in the hall I could have sanded it down put strips on there reinforce them with with the epoxy and everything and then back up and running within 24 hours the rope I had this is the 3/8 inch I had a quarter inch rope that I brought with me I don't know where that is right now so this is a 3/8 inch it's the same exact stuff this is like a marine rope so it floats and everything it's mildew resistant and all that I got an umbrella finally down in Grafton Illinois this was in the package that my wife sent to me and I I was dying to get something like this and I didn't really have a good way to mount it on the kayak so all I did was take a stick that was laying on the banks that a river I put it through wheels on my portage wheels and you know he dripped onto it with that and it worked I mean it was it was ugly but it did help a lot and so on the kayaks I had both a cockpit cupboard and a rain skirt obviously the rain spirit you sit in and then it seals the back fist so water doesn't flood into the cockpit anymore that needs to and the cover I would use at night and that was just basically more or less just to keep bugs out of the damn thing because I always had bugs in the kayak in the morning I didn't really have much for bailing on the kayaks I did have a sponge with me I used it occasionally it wasn't until I got down to Baton Rouge and actually cut one of my bottles and then I had a bottle to bail with just in case I had a problem portage wheels I had the seat tug kayak cart it's a little bulky little big sea tug kayak cart little spendy you know the plastic wheels with a rubber coating on them so the nice thing is is you not got to worry about air rubber tires and air inner tubes or anything like that they don't go flat on the upper river I did have the Minnesota DNR Maps for the Mississippi basically from Lake Itasca down to Hastings I think is where that final map ends then I also had portage Maps with me so I knew exactly how to get around each dam on the upper river I had a map case this thing would seal and protect the maps from rain and river water I carried two life jackets with me the Onix inflatable which I ended up having to leave behind after it went off twice for no apparent reason and a paddlers life jacket which became my primary after I got rid of a Onix I also had a combination lock and a cable to lock the kayak when it was out of sight I used bug spray and sunscreen daily so don't forget to have those keep in mind like any of the videos on the river this is not the list of things you need this was my list of things you need I did successfully make it down the river so you know if any of these items tickle your fancy by all means but I don't think there's any one of these items that was actually you know specifically necessary for my trip down the river maybe my paddles those were pretty important Warner Shuna I love these paddles I've retired these paddles these paddles last trip was down the river and I'm gonna set them on the wall somewhere or something like that carbon fibre shaft fiberglass panels had a paddle leash on them pretty much all the time yeah so going back what I was saying I'm sure it wasn't gonna be a long video I apologize for that I wanted to do a detailed list everybody's been asking about it so I wanted to do it just it do it justice if you have questions about any specific item please feel free to ask I will try to do reviews on I'll try to do reviews or should I buys on most of these items just to kind of get a little more detail people can watch those in depth if they want to yeah and then you know the important thing to is remember this is not the list of things you need to do the river this was my list of things I used to do the river if I don't have the camera equipment the laptop and all the batteries and everything I would have run a folding chair so if you're not gonna bring all that electronics to fill them and do all that junk that I did a chair is what I would have brought Stead's so they have all kinds of great little folding chairs out there I wish I would have had a chair so aside from that I like I said I'm trying really hard to get to that 1000 subscriber mark so I can continue to progress along I'm the YouTube channel that I'm that I'm working on so you know if you have any questions please let me know otherwise thanks for watching see you in the next one [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: escape with jay

Views: 8,104

Rating: 4.9662447 out of 5

Keywords: Camping Gear, Camping Equipment, Kayak Camping Gear, Gear List, Kayak Gear, kayaking, kayaking the mississippi river

Id: u4ldKkYVL1I

Length: 32min 8sec (1928 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 24 2020