Dry Ice (my first try)

We've been camping in the mountains of Colorado for 6 days now. On day one, I picked up a 10lb block of dry ice for the cooler. I laid a brown paper bag in the bottom of the cooler, put the wrapped dry ice on top of it, and filled the cooler with drinks and food. I love this stuff! During the week I had to drive to town for a re supply and picked up another block. That block should get me through 3 more days.

Any of the heavy coolers like yeti will handle dry ice. I have the ozark trail cooler from Walmart and it's doing great. You have to crack open the drain valve a little to keep the pressure from building, and you don't want the dry ice directly against the cooler plastic.
There was a learning curve as I froze a few eggs, but it also froze some water bottles solid which added to the cooling of all the other contents in the cooler.
The best part is that there is no water to drain, and if your meat container flips around off road, you don't end up with all your food and drinks floating in meat water.
I did the math just for grins and giggles and it comes out to about the same money for all the bags of standard ice it would have taken.

 

An interesting idea.

Dry ice isn't always available at every podunk little town market so best to call ahead to see if they have it, and I would store the cooler outside/in the truck bed to ensure that the CO2 doesn't build up in your vehicle or tent and suffocate you.

I wonder if you could rig up your cooler to have the CO2 block on one side of the cooler. People say top is best, but for convenience most put them on the bottom. If you rig up a divider on one side of the cooler it might be a decent compromise and would help prevent freezer burn.

Something I just read about is mosquitoes. Expect them to hover around the cooler because they're attracted to the CO2 we exhale. Not something I had considered before, but it makes sense.

For serious long term camping though, you need a 12v frig (ARB or whatever). They're spendy, but if you're out for more than several days or a week, it's the only way to keep food preserved without constant re-supply trips to town. No need for hazardous material (CO2) handling or soggy meat.

 

I've never used dry ice directly on non frozen food. I have used it to keep ice and then use that ice normally in another cooler. Last time I used 2 25 pound blocks of ice with perhaps 15 pound of dry ice placed in between. That ice kept for 5 days and allowed for an extended stay very far from any ice source.