Eagle Creek, Luggage, reviews, travelbunny

Eagle Creek Travel Bug

I had an earlier version of the travel bug back in the 1990s, so I guess I’ve always had a soft spot for a little day bag that was low profile – and generally made by Eagle Creek 😉

Mostly I need something that I can go hands-free when I’m walking around a travel destination or shopping or just generally going through the airport.

The latest iteration of the travel bug has some great new features. Locking zippers, passport sleeve (the RFID blocking thing has been talked to death and generally proven wrong, but I don’t care, it’s a good pocket with a hook and loop closure to keep my passport from flying around in the pocket.) I’ve got room for my phone battery, a key clip, my regular sized iPad fits in there without taking up all the room, a side pocket AND a zip away water bottle pocket to help keep the profile sleek.

I can fit my day to day survival kit in the bottom of the main compartment as well as a knitting project.

Features

  • PROTECTION: Armed with two-way lockable zippers on the main compartments and two central lock points, this backpack will keep all your belongings safe and secure.
  • PERSONAL SAFETY: Reflective accents throughout the bag with a light attachment loop for nightime visibility ensuring your safety.
  • ORGANIZATION: Each bag includes smart organization features such as; mesh & slip pockets, pen loops & key fob, and a passport sized RFID blocker pocket to help [prevent] ID theft.
  • DIMENSIONS: 9.5 X 15 X 5 in. | 10.5 Liter capacity

Bags & Luggage, CotopaxiNazca, travelbunny

Cotopaxi Nazca 24L Yes or No?

This really is a lovely bag. Well made, good materials and environmentally friendly production.

Lets get to the parts I love most then we’ll get into why I’m wavering in keeping it:

  • I love the materials. Black canvas, leather strap points… nifty.
  • The interior organization is good. I love the clamshell opening then having zip compartments for your stuff. The clamshell feature is mostly what attracted me to this in the first place.
    Actually, I first wanted the Allpa but it was too big for my purposes, and happily the Nazca is not.
  • The straps are great to wear and it has a larger webbing hip belt that does well for the smaller bag. Super comfy. I think mostly I won’t need the hip belt because I probably won’t have it stuffed that full.
  • it holds the right amount of stuff.
  • it looks sooooo pretty

Now the things that made me doubt if I want to keep it:

  • It is a longer pack, and I have a very short torso. This messes with me in backpacking packs as well. I’ve come to terms with the longer packs (one of my all-time favorites ever was the Eagle Creek Bedouin, but the straps on it with any weight at all were painful. I’m still looking for ways to replace them without breaking the bank.)
  • I thought the weight balance would be awkward with the 2 rectangular sections put together, but it is only slightly so on my short torso. To be certain I will look like a derp (as I do anytime I use a hip belt on a loaded pack) if I need to go miles in this thing, but I can handle that I think. The weight balance seems doable.
  • I think I need just a bit more division on the main compartments. That’s just a personal thing. I’ve seen many folks load it up and it packs just fine. If they had miniaturized the Allpa I’d be content.
  • I actually don’t need the laptop compartment. 😉 I put my collapsible daypack in there.
  • No water bottle pocket. Sigh.

Test packing the Nazca:

In the front pocket:

  • airplane stuff: charger, cable, earbuds
  • liquids for easy TSA walk through

In the laptop sleeve:

In the main area, left side:

  • packing cube 1
  • Cpap and associated gear
  • dry kit
  • passport and travel docs would go in the yellow zip compartment on the front of this compartment

In the main area, right side:

So far so good. After all was packed I could put the pack on and not need the waist belt. Using the waist belt pushed the pack up on my back (short torso, remember?) but was still doable-especially without a laptop in there. I could definitely wander about in a foreign city for hours without too much discomfort. If I was doing that I probably wouldn’t have a laptop anyway. I only ever take my laptop on business trips.

Verdict: No. I tested various configurations and my short torso is just too short for this.

I’m sad now.

Yes! I keep because I love 😉
I’ll probably be using this for a trip I have in mind that has several driving segments and a flight segment.

Here are some pics of starting to pack for this upcoming trip:

Outside, not stuffed full:


The small front pocket:

Pack opened when somewhat packed:
Left side of opened pack: cpap and gear and dry kit, still room for another packing cube: 
Right side of pack with basic clothes in cube:

There’s definitely enough room for me to put another packing cube and my Tom Bihn Sidekick if I need to, but I tend to want that where I can access it or put my hands on it easily.

Buy the Nazca 24L on Amazon here or on Cotopaxi’s site here.

Here are some other folks who use this pack:

Cotopaxi.com | Our founder, Davis Smith, grew up in Latin America and lived for several years in Ecuador. When he wasn’t in school, Davis was exploring and camping in Cotopaxi National Park. It was here that he developed a lifelong reverence for the strong, hard-working people of the Andes. His time in Latin America also showed him the plight of those in abject poverty… [Read more]

Bags & Luggage, Luggage, Packing, travelbunny

EDCRB (Every Day Carry RyanAir Bag)

I’ve done lots of running about the countryside lately and I have been just grabbing my little polka dot personal size bag that I got a few weeks ago as my go to bag.

I’m not actually using my standard set of packing cubes for travel, I’ve just got a couple of REI mini cubes with extra socks and a pair of leggings. The other things are things that would normally go in my purse or a daypack as well as my sleep gear.

Left most column of stuff (top to bottom): string wallet, pouch o’ cables and adaptors etc, REI microcube, battery bank, another REI microcube.

Middle column: REI mini dopp kit (this lives in any bag I carry – has  lip balm, travel spork, face SPF, pills, (dry stuff basically) etc), cpap

Right column: Sea to Summit cube o’ wires (cpap accessories and wall adaptor with 2 USB ports, phone Wi-Fi backup unit, mini flashlight for cave-like conditions.)

Just tucked in the front: finger puppets…because reasons, mini lotion carrier.

Also tucked in but not shown: Magic travel cpap tubing and my collapsible coffee drip cone.

Front pocket: holds the stuff I’d normally carry in my 3-1-1 kit (I also have a ziplock bag ready to stuff all my liquids in if I do actually go to an airport): toothbrush/toothpaste combo, shower stuff and soaps.

Pushinocorn lives on the handle.

If I’m just running around doing errands I just leave out the sleep stuff, but it’s been great for the last several weeks: for camping as my in tent bag, for when I decide I need sleep over after some of the epic game days at friends’ houses who live over an hour away and generally being mostly packed for any more family emergencies.

For an airport trip I’d add a few snack bars, my basic cube in place of the little cubes, my alien buddy and my iPad mini. Easily added.

California, Camping, Travel: The Americas, travelbunny, USA

Samuel P Taylor State Park

A quick camping trip is always welcome! Happily there are many beautiful and varied options around the San Francisco Bay Area to head over to see.

Just north of the city, the redwood forests are still standing from the gold rush days of the 1800’s. Some are younger, but there’s a stretch at the beginning of the Pioneer Tree trail where there’s a bunch of old growth redwoods and beautiful streams to hike along.

The park is named for Samuel Penfield Taylor, who found gold during the California Gold Rush and used some of his money to buy a parcel of land along Lagunitas Creek.[3] In 1856, Taylor built the Pioneer Paper Mill, the first paper mill on the Pacific Coast.[4] In the 1870s, the North Pacific Coast Railroad was built between Cazadero and a pier in Sausalito where passengers could transfer to a ferry to San Francisco. The railroad passed near Taylor’s mill, and, ever the entrepreneur, he built the “Camp Taylor Resort” alongside the tracks. A destination for city-weary San Franciscans, the resort offered both a hotel and tent camping, as well as swimming, boating, fishing, and a dance pavilion.[5][6]
– Wikipedia

We also took advantage of all the yummy food in the area. To be honest I didn’t totally feel like it was a legit camping trip since we ate fancy cheese at Cowgirl Creamery (I recommend the Red Hawk and the Mount Tam), had oysters on the half shell in Olema and pretty much nibbled yummy food continuously around the area. But we did have all of the campfires with s’mores experimentation. Substituting chocolate chip cookies for graham crackers was my favorite.

It was great 🙂

Paris, Travel: Europe, travelbunny, Travelog

Paris: the middle part

I was doing pretty well for the first part. But being in Paris with a person who has never been there before and wanting to show them ALL THE THINGS takes a toll on your feet. Especially at the Louvre. Never again!

Although… it did amuse me to catch Magikarp by the pyramid fountain there. Maybe I’ll make an exception.

By the fourth day, I was sort of museumed out, but we still had more to cover. I had fond memories of the Picasso museum from the 90’s, though it didn’t seem to impress my hubby. He did, however, have a transcendent experience over Monet’s water lily paintings.

The Musée D’Orsay was the only museum that I really required us to go to, so I was completely exhausted but very happy to be there.

I tromped all over the museum until I found my favorite painting by Henri Rousseau. I was exhausted but I was not going to miss this painting.

Despite the fact that we were there for 10 days, it really felt like a whirlwind tour of Paris. I felt more like a tourist than I was used to feeling. I lived there for a while during school, so I was kind of accustomed to being more of a resident, enjoying la vie quitodienne. I don’t even know if I can recommend little out-of-the-way places in Paris at this point. We basically staggered home each night, ate in one of the little restaurants on the way to the hotel from the metro station, and then passed out in bed till we got up in the morning to do it all over again.

Oh wait! I do have one kind of an interesting fact to share; it seems that the iconic surly waiters of Paris have been replaced by adorable hipster waiters who laugh with you, make jokes, generally seem happy to be alive and help you with the menu. That was kind of cool.

But I really missed going to little grocery stores and looking at weird food packaging, sitting in cafés and sketching (as trite as that sounds I actually am an artist so I art a bit here and there ;)… also, COFFEE) and having random people talk to me about what I was sketching. The French are dear, lovely folks with a different set of priorities than North Americans. They won’t tell you their life story in the first 20 minutes that you meet them (like my happy Texan cohorts) or chatter aimlessly about life. They will ask you about your politics and expect you to be able to back up your thoughts and feelings with the reasons you think so. I understand that and can more or less do so in French, but I also find it super adorable when they get happy chatty about me sketching AND being able to speak French (despite the fact that I am an American who learned the bulk of my French in Texas.) It’s the little things in life, you see.

It was just going by too fast.

Oh well. I suppose I’ll just have to go back.

I thought it was going to be cold in October, but I was in short sleeves every day, which was really nice walking around the parks and made for some fairly striking pictures of the sculptures there, but seriously half the clothes I brought I couldn’t wear because they were too warm. I was frankly a little disappointed not to be able to wear my scarves. I’d worked so hard during my time in France to master the art of wearing a scarf all for it to be too sweaty to do so! C’est la vie!

And finally we ended up at the Eiffel Tower at night.

Beautiful… and still, to this day, startles me with how big it really is when you walk up to it.

Also new, and saddening, is all the security that they have around the base of the Eiffel Tower. The last time I went there in 1999 it was free and open, there were hotdog vendors who sold amazing hotdogs with the mustard that their grandmother made that morning (holy cow, so good) and now you have to go through a long line, a gate, and an inspection of your bags and generally cranky security folks who would much rather be drinking wine in a cafe enjoying the atypically beautiful October weather thankyouverymuch.

Dear human race,
Can we please get our acts together and be nice to each other so that we don’t have to go through this crap? Thanks ever so.
Love,
fredlet

Again, we got back to the hotel about 2 in the morning, so I was rather looking forward to parking my weary butt on the Eurostar for a few hours to get to London for a sneaky little trip-in-a-trip. 20k steps a day (according to my FitBit) can wear you out.

J’❤ Paris.

Also, J’ ❤ this bunny.

Next up, those London parts… stay tuned.

California, Ooooooh!, Toy Story Alien, Travel: The Americas, travelbunny, USA

Disney Pixarfest!

Alien and I will be trekking down to SoCal to visit the other aliens in the house of mouse sometime this year… yes, of course I will be dressed up ridiculously.

I think my primary accessory (other than my alien who has been all over the world with me) will be this backpack (Venture Pal Ultralight Lightweight Packable Foldable Travel Camping Hiking Outdoor Sports Backpack Daypack (Blue)). I’m adding a Pizza Planet patch to it and will have a few things in there for the day. Alien headband, sunscreen, water bottles, various snacks etc. Must leave room for purchases.

I also have a short sleeve shirt with the aliens on it that I’ll probably wear most of the day, but long sleeves is always necessary at some point.

If you hear lots of squeeing, it’s ok, just me losing my mind over all the alien stuff.