Here is a cheap trick for those of you who are palnning on doing 'expedition' type trips in the back country.

To wash your clothes, get a bucket that has a lid that you can close off, a plastic drywall bucket works fine for this. Stick your dirty clothes into this with some water...stream water will work just fine...add a little soap and maybe a good sized rock or two. Strap it onto the back of our rig and wheel all day long. At the end of the day, wring the clothes out and rinse them off. We used to do this on our very low budget climbing road trips.

For a continual source of cool water, locate one of those flat looking canvas water bags. Fill it with water and lash it anywhere on your rig. The water evaporation will keep the water cool. These are the same style 'old school' water bags that you see in the movies on covered wagons and strapped to horse saddles. You can still get them, though I imagine that Cabelas or a similar outfitter source may be your only place to buy them anymore.

I just found one link:

http://can-spec.com/canspec/products/products.php?ID=14

I googled 'canvas desert water bags' and got a lot of links. Didn't have time to run them down. People still make them and it wouldn't be that hard to get a regular canvas and awning company to stitch some up. The key is to use the 'flax' canvas as it 'wicks' better ...

Last edited by Brody; May 13th, 2009 at 06:05 AM.