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Old 11-08-2002, 12:06 AM   #8
Bill
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: The mountains of Scottsdale, AZ, and the beaches of Maine
Posts: 10,088
Default Re: TrailManor refrigerator concern

2619er -

Last June, we stayed about 5 days in Sequoia/King's Canyon NP, and then about 5 days in Yosemite NP. In Sequoia, they were VERY serious about bears and bear boxes. The rangers gave us the bear-box speech as we checked in, also gave us a pamphlet, and then came by later to remind us. They insisted that not only food, but also soap, hair spray, deodorant, and anything with a smell, should go into the bear box at night. And beyond this, they asked us to throw a blanket over anything rectangular in the car. Apparently, the bears peek in the car window and think that a rectangular box is a cooler (even if it is really a cardboard box of books), and rip open the car to get it. We heeded the warnings and had no problems, but there were three bear break-ins in our campground (about 300 sites) during our 5-day stay. I presume that these involved people who didn't pay attention to the warnings. There were no injuries - the bears want food and are basically afraid of people. For what it is worth, about 200 of the 300 sites were occupied by canvas pop-ups or tents, but we were glad to be in a hard-sided TM. So yes, I would take the bear-boxes seriously.

By contrast, Yosemite also had bear boxes, but the rangers didn't mention them and few people seemed to use them. We did, having just come from Sequoia, but we didn't hear about any bear problems.

If you are going to use a bear box, the thermoelectric cooler is really handy. At the end of the day, you put all your pre-chilled perishables into the T-E cooler, and slide it into the bear box. In the morning, you pull the cooler out of the bear box and simply plug it in - no need to transfer the food back and forth to the TM refrig. Incidentally, the basic T-E cooler uses 12 VDC. You don't need AC power to run it, as was suggested in an earlier post. This is a good thing, since none of the sites in Sequoia or Yosemite had AC power available. IF you have AC power, and IF you have an AC adapter (comes with the Coleman), THEN you can run the cooler from AC - but that is not its native mode.

Hope this helps

Bill
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